Abducted Nepal politicians freed

Sushil Sharma
BBC correspondent in Kathmandu

Suspected Maoist rebels in Nepal have freed a mayor and deputy mayor they kidnapped earlier on Friday in the town of Bharatpur, 100 kilometres west of Kathmandu.

Nanda Prasad Bhattarai and his deputy, Rudra Dhakal, were kidnapped shortly before they were to take the oath of office, police said.

The Maoist rebels have threatened to disrupt any elections

The rebels released them on condition they did not take up their office in the town.

The two men are members of the right-wing Rastriya Prajatantra Party of Prime Minister Surya Bahadur Thapa.

They had been appointed recently under a government move to fill vacancies in city councils across the country.

Council elections, overdue by more than a year, have not been held due to security concerns caused by the Maoist insurgency.

National elections were also suspended last year on similar grounds with rebels threatening to disrupt the polls.

Constitutional row

The Maoists want elections for a constituent assembly that will draw up a new constitution and so clear the way, they believe, for replacing the constitutional monarchy with a communist republic.

The government has refused to scrap the existing constitution which preserves the monarchy and multi-party democracy.

Differences over the constituent assembly elections have twice caused the breakdown of peace talks in the past two years.

In a separate incident, an armed group set a hotel on fire in a tourist resort in the southern Chitwan district and stole some $700.

None of the tourists was harmed in the incident.

Although the police suspect Maoist rebels were involved, the rebels have always insisted they never target tourists.

Violence has increased since the latest collapse of talks in August, raising the death toll of the eight-year conflict to more than 8,000. Abductions have also increased in recent months.