>
> There is a spooky UPI (who owns them now,
> some Saudi prince or something?)
The Moonies, I think, but the Bangkok Post says the interview is done by a _former_ UPI correspondent.
> Bangkok Post "interview" today with the
> U.S. Ambassador to Nepal that admits that it's all about whether the
> Royal Nepali Army will be used against the kids, and assumes that unless
> something is done quickly the dread maoists will have their way etc
> http://www.bangkokpost.com/today/190601_News20.html
>
Since the Bangkok Post seems to have only a six-day archive here is the interview:
INTERVIEW / US AMBASSADOR TO NEPAL
Guerrillas look to make capital Ambassador Ralph Frank expects Nepal's communists to try to take advantage of the slaying of King Birendra and other members of the royal family despite a commitment from the new king to honour democracy.
Richard S. Ehrlich
Armed Maoist guerrillas are advancing with "no viable opposition in the rural areas" and rapidly trying to exploit the vacuum left by the murdered royal family, US Ambassador Ralph Frank warned last week.
The alleged assassin of the royal family, Prince Dipendra, who apparently committed suicide in the palace bloodbath, "would have been a very, very modern king", the ambassador also said.
"The Maoists are on a roll," Mr Frank said at the embassy on Wednesday. "They have no viable opposition in the rural areas. The government has either been forced out or withdrawn in many areas."
An estimated 4,000 to 5,000 guerrillas, mostly in the mountains of western Nepal, are battling security forces in a five-year-long insurgency which has left more than 1,600 people dead on all sides.
"This is a group that actually is far more attracted to the Shining Path model of Peru," Mr Frank said. "To the best of anyone's knowledge that I know, there is no connection whatsoever with China. There is very, very little outside influence at all.
"Their funding comes primarily from extortion and bank robbery. All internal. The group is led by intellectual Brahmins," Mr Frank said, referring to the highest caste in the Hindu religion's rigid social hierarchy. "The followers tend to be not well educated and more driven by the need for jobs and improvement of their life."
Mr Frank said Nepal's rebels were not like the Maoist Khmer Rouge guerrillas in Cambodia under Pol Pot, who killed more than one million people during their 1975 to 1979 reign. "I don't believe that is within the Nepali psyche.
"Do they believe in Mao as an ideology? Most reports you see, that's not the case. But the top level leadership does believe the Cultural Revolution was the best thing that came down the block." In China, under the late Mao Zedong, the 1966 to 1976 Cultural Revolution was a fanatical, bloody and ultimately failed attempt to level all economic classes and control society in highly politicised collectives.
Today, Nepal's Maoist guerrillas also display severe restrictions on people under their control.
"Already you can see evidence in areas where they are, where they do control the power, they have already instituted controls where people are not allowed to gather without their permission. External suppliers of medical assistance have been not allowed in because it's not coming from the Maoists. It's a very, very restrictive culture where they have taken over."
The government, along with the constitutional monarchy and the security forces, need to tackle the guerrillas "so that the Maoists find adequate incentive to come to the negotiating table. Right now they don't have that incentive."
Nepal, between India and Tibet, is one of the poorest nations on earth.
"If you look at the 40 points that the Maoists have presented, there are many very populous points. Property rights for women. Help for the poor and the disadvantaged. Property rights for people who toil the land. It goes on and on.
"I think there is a fascinating poll completed recently that pointed out that less than 2% of the people supported Maoist ideology. That is not to say the people aren't frustrated. There's unemployment. The economic situation is not good. People simply don't have jobs.
"It's a sense of unsatisfied desires and expectations with democracy. If anyone provided that, the people would be attracted to it."
The dead king, Birendra, was worried about using the army to exterminate the Maoists, the ambassador said. "King Birendra was very concerned about the army being turned on its own people. I think he saw it more as a tool to provide security.
"He wanted the army to be used in a more passive role, to provide a security environment so development could take place. In other words, a 'hearts and minds' programme.
"He wanted to win the people back from the Maoists, not go out and eliminate the Maoists. He wanted to eliminate the attraction of the Maoist programme."
The guerrillas meanwhile are trying to take advantage of the killings which occurred in Kathmandu's royal palace on June 1. "I think a vacuum has been created and they are moving quickly to try to fill that," the ambassador said. "But I don't think that vacuum will exist very long once the mourning period is over and King Gyanendra establishes himself and his relationship again with the people and with the government."
King Gyanendra is the brother of slain King Birendra. He was crowned on June 4.
"What has happened has not driven the people away from the monarchy. It is still a revered institution in this country."
The alleged killer, Dipendra, "was a very vigorous and interesting young man, very concerned about the modern problems of his people", according to Mr Frank. "He was concerned about Aids, he was concerned about many of the migration kinds of issues, ethnic issues. He would have been a very, very modern king when his time came."
Mr Frank also met Dipendra's sweetheart, the gorgeous Devyani Rana, who is now abroad in hiding.
Miss Rana was reportedly rejected as a potential bride by Dipendra's mother, the late Queen Aishwarya-possibly creating a family feud which pushed Dipendra into slaying his relatives.
The new king, Gyanendra, currently faces hostility by many Nepalis who suspect he or his son, Paras, may have had a hand in the slayings.
But two eyewitnesses who were in the palace at the time have insisted a drunken Dipendra coldly opened fire with an assault rifle while stalking room to room, shooting repeatedly at pleading family members. Conspiracy theories portraying Dipendra as an innocent patsy nevertheless are still popular despite an official report confirming his responsibility.
"Part of it is just the Hindu culture. It's unimaginable for a son to kill his parents. It just does not happen.
"Then, on top of that, the king [Birendra] was truly idolised by the people, so they can't imagine anyone would want to kill the king. And then, on top of that, Dipendra was very much admired by the people because he got out more with the people, he was interested in more of what they perceived as the common Nepalis' interests.
"So both of them were very admired. So it was just unimaginable that either of them would either be victim or a perpetrator of such an act."
The gruesome murders caused "enormous disruption to the psyche of the Nepali people. Does it challenge democracy? No. Does it create some vacant areas where it's not clear how this king [Gyanendra] will interact with the government, and how this king will interact with the Nepali people? That remains to be seen.
"He [King Gyanendra] has been very much involved with projects all over Nepal. He's worked at the grass-roots level. He's been more protected than the previous king was."
- Richard S. Ehrlich is a former UPI correspondent who has reported from Asia for the past 23 years.