US facing dilemma: Camp

March 3, 2005
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A senior US official admitted in Washington D. C. that his government is facing dilemma on the issue of freezing its military assistance to Nepal fearing that the move could undermine Kathmandu’s fight against insurgents, agency reports said.

The United States plans to extend $2 million in security assistance to Nepal this year but is under pressure from some lawmakers and influential international rights groups to suspend its military assistance in view of recent developments in Nepal on February 1.

India and Britain have already suspended their military aid to the Himalayan kingdom.

“We now face a dilemma in making decisions about security assistance for Nepal. We have not made a decision to suspend assistance,” Donald Camp, deputy assistant secretary of state for South Asia, told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific Wednesday. “We’re reviewing it and seeing how the situation (develops). We’d prefer not to.”

Camp, however, said the royal move has probably emboldened the Maoists and made it more likely that the Maoists have a stronger position than they did before February 1.

U.S. security aid, in addition to replacing antique rifles with M-16s to help Nepal fight the Maoists, was helping train the Nepali military “in values as well as skills,” he said.

Camp told the subcommittee that Washington has pressed the Nepalis to investigate and punish members of security personnel responsible for abuses. But he said Washington believed the biggest threat was the Maoists who want to replace Nepal’s constitutional monarchy with a one-party communist state.

The United States was thinking seriously about whether to push for censure of Nepal by the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, he said. Washington balked last year at a proposed motion that equally condemned Nepal and the Maoists.

“We did not want to have any part in a resolution that seemed to equate the two. That is still true,” Camp said.

A statement prepared for Assistant Secretary for South Asia Christina Rocca and delivered to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee by Principal Undersecretary Donald Camp, the Bush administration said, “HM King Gyanendra needs to move quickly to reinstate and protect civil and human rights, release those detained under the state of emergency and begin a dialogue with the political parties intended to restore multi-party democratic institutions under a constitutional monarchy.”