The second round of talks between the government talk team and Nepal Federation of Indigenous Nationalities (NFIN) ended inconclusively Friday.

The government talk team claimed that they were close to reaching consensus during Friday’s meeting, but NFIN negotiators said that the talks ended inconclusively as the government was not serious about the talks.

Emerging from the meeting, government’s talk team Minister of State for Water Resources, Gyanendra Bahadur Karki said the talks had reached near consensus and that all the issues would be resolved by March 5, the deadline given by the NFIN to the government to meet its demands.

Both the sides have agreed to hold third round of talks on Monday.

The NFIN said that it would launch massive agitation if the government failed to meet its demand by March 5.

The NFIN has been protesting with demands like ethnic autonomy, federal system, linguistic freedom, proportional representation in the forthcoming constituent assembly polls and guarantee self-determination.

The Federation has suggested the government not to amend the interim constitution before the talks arrived at a conclusion.

Coordinator of government’s talk team, Minister for Agriculture and Co-operative, Mahanta Thakur, could not attend the meeting due to his bad health.