The announcement came one day after a three-party coalition led by Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala won a confidence vote in parliament, and recommended the holding of an early general election.

GP Koirala will be caretaker prime minister until the elections

The forthcoming elections will be the third since multi-party democracy was established in 1990.

Political instability

Nepal has had five governments in the past four years after the general elections in 1994 produced a hung parliament. Mr. Koirala said that a fresh election was the only answer to political instability.

Mr Koirala will continue in office as head of a caretaker government head and conduct the elections. He promised to conduct the elections "fairly, freely and safely".

The BBC Correspondent in Kathmandu, Sushil Sharma, says this is the second time that Mr Koirala asked for fresh elections. His earlier recommendation as minority prime minister was rejected by King Birendra last month.

Daniel Lak reports on Nepal's stumbling democracy

Similar recommendations by two other prime ministers have also been rejected in the past four years on the basis of a court ruling that the parliament can not be dissolved as long as there is a possibility of alternative government.

After his last recommendation was rejected in December, Mr Koirala resigned as the head of the minority government of the centrist Nepali Congress.

He later joined hands with two opposition parties, the Nepal Communist Party, United Marxist-Leninist (UML) and the regional, Nepal Sadbhavana Party, to form a coalition, which together had a two-thirds majority in parliament.

The main opposition Nepal Communist Party, United Marxist-Leninist (UML) joined the government on condition that Mr Koirala would make a recommendation for an early poll.

Series of coalitions

Few of the six governments in power over the past four years have lasted longer than a year.

But the desire to cling on to power sometimes makes for strange political combinations in the government - including in 1997 a group containing communists and monarchists.

The series of coalitions has been characterised by countless political squabbles, and the country's development has suffered from the instability.

Observers say there is one cloud on the election horizon - there are fears that a hardline Maoist Communist movement in Nepal will try to disrupt the polls.