Nepal’s king will have 15 days to leave the palace after his centuries-old throne is abolished, officials said Wednesday, hours before they were expected to declare the country a republic, AP said.
King Gyanendra has remained silent as it has become apparent that his days as Nepal’s monarch were numbered, and the country’s leading politicians have in recent days threatened to remove him from the palace by force if he refused to go peacefully.
But, in an apparent bid to defuse the potential stand off, Nepal’s newly elected Constituent Assembly will give the king 15 days to vacate the 1970s-era concrete palace in central Katmandu after the country is declared a republic, said Bimalendra Nidhi of the centrist Nepali Congress, the second largest party in the assembly.

Nepalese people take part in a rally in support of Nepal becoming a republic, in Kathmandu on May 29.

Nidhi made the comments after his party met with the country’s former rebels, the Maoists, who hold the most seats in the assembly and are expected to lead the country’s new government.
The assembly is charged with governing Nepal as it rewrites the constitution and 575 of its members were sworn in Tuesday. Another 26 are to be appointed later.
When the assembly begins works Wednesday, the political parties have made it clear that their first act will be to declare Nepal a republic and do away with the 239-year-old Shah dynasty, which united Nepal and has reigned ever since.

No Reaction
There was no immediate reaction from the palace, which has rarely commented on political developments in Nepal since King Gyanendra was forced to end his royal dictatorship and restore democracy after widespread protests two years ago.
The Maoists then gave up their 10-year fight for a communist Nepal, and the election of the assembly in April marked the culmination of the peace process with the former insurgents.
The move is being widely anticipated by many Nepalis, and thousands of people were already gathering on the streets of Katmandu early Wednesday to celebrate the “republic day.“
But getting rid of the Shah dynasty is in many ways the least of the new government’s problems, as evidenced by a string of bombings that hit Katmandu on Monday and Tuesday, all apparently aimed at pro-republic politicians and activists.
While the four bombings only wounded two people, they underscored how difficult it will be to fashion lasting peace and bring widespread prosperity to this Himalayan land that was bled for a decade by the Maoist insurgency and is still regularly bloodied by political violence.
Authorities have deployed 10,000 policemen in Katmandu to head off more violence and banned rallies around the palace and the convention center where the assembly is meeting.

Sweeping Change
The Maoists, meanwhile, say 20,000 volunteers from their youth wing are in Katmandu to help control the celebrations--a fact that hasn’t assuaged fears of violence with the young Maoists regularly accused of intimidating, roughing up and sometimes killing opponents.
The Maoists have promised to bring sweeping change to Nepal, a largely impoverished country that in many places more closely resembles medieval Europe than a modern nation.
But once Nepal has been declared a republic no one is certain what will happen with the Maoists still struggling to form a government and political violence persisting.
If Gyanendra peacefully leaves the palace for good, he is expected to move to the palatial private Katmandu home where he lived before assuming the throne in 2001 following a massacre at the royal palace in which a gunman, allegedly the crown prince, gunned down late King Birendra and much of the royal family before killing himself.

Five Arctic coastal countries will meet in Greenland on Wednesday to discuss how to carve up the Arctic Ocean, which could hold up to one-quarter of the world’s undiscovered oil and gas reserves, far more than Saudia Arabia’s.
“I am sure we will be able to identify ways ahead for future development in and around the Arctic Ocean which will be peaceful, secure and to the benefit of all our countries,“ Danish Foreign Minister Per Stig Moeller told AFP late Tuesday.
Canada, Denmark, Norway, Russia and the United States are squabbling over much of the Arctic seabed and Denmark has called them together for talks in its self-governing province to avert a free-for-all for the region’s resources.
Russia angered the other Arctic countries last year by planting a flag on the seabed under the North Pole in a headline-grabbing gesture that some criticised as a stunt.
Russia’s lead explorer Artur Chilingarov, declared at the time, “The Arctic is ours,“ thereby staking Moscow’s claim to 460,000 square miles of ocean floor, more than five times the area of Britain.

South African President Thabo Mbeki came under fire Tuesday for traveling to Japan as anti-immigrant violence spread to a new province and aid groups struggled with thousands of displaced victims, AFP reported.
The petrol bombing of a Chinese-owned business in Eastern Cape province, which has largely escaped the xenophobic violence, undermined the confidence expressed by the government on Monday that the unrest had been contained.
Fifty-six people have been killed and tens of thousands left homeless, mainly around the economic capital Johannesburg, in two weeks of attacks.
Mbeki delivered a rare televised national address on Sunday where he lambasted the “shameful acts“ which have sullied the reputation of a country which had styled itself as a “Rainbow Nation“ since the end of the whites-only apartheid regime 14 years ago. But most commentators said the president’s intervention was too little, too late, pointing out that Mbeki has still to visit any of the township areas where the violence broke out.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the United Nations will investigate allegations by a leading children’s charity that UN peacekeepers were involved in widespread sexual abuse of children, along with international aid workers.
Ban on Tuesday expressed his deep concern over a new report issued by “Save the Children“, an NGO, that spotlights the under-reporting of child sexual exploitation and abuse by aid workers and peacekeepers.
“The abuse of children by those sent to help is a significant and painful issue and one that UN peacekeeping has and will continue to address candidly, comprehensively and robustly,“ Ban said in a statement issued by his spokesperson.
“Even one incident is one incident too many,“ AP reported.
He noted that the UN is committed to training and monitoring its civilian staff and working with troop and police contributing countries so that all personnel are trained in and are accountable for the highest standards of conduct. As the report cited, the UN has already taken several steps to address the problem, including setting up conduct and discipline units in all missions to boost training for all personnel.

Chinese President Hu Jintao met the head of Taiwan’s ruling party here on Wednesday, state television showed, the highest level contact since the two sides split in 1949 after a civil war, AFP reported.
Hu greeted Kuomintang chairman Wu Poh-hsiung at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, with the pair shaking hands and smiling before posing for a photograph with their delegations ahead of their official meeting.
“Based on the past exchanges and communications between the two parties, and under the new situation, I hope we can promote cross-strait relations, exchange our opinions and look to the future, and push forward peaceful cross-strait development,“ Hu said in remarks to the delegations that were broadcast on TV.
Wednesday’s meeting is part of a dramatic easing of tensions between China and Taiwan.
The Kuomintang’s defeat of the pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party in Taiwan’s presidential polls in March has been the trigger for the rapprochement between the self-ruled island and China.