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Koirala returns as Nepal PM

Nepal Congress leader Girija Prasad Koirala has been appointed prime minister at the head of a three-party coalition government.

The sole objective of the new administration, which came into being on Wednesday night, is to hold "fair and peaceful'' parliamentary poll within the next four months.

Koirala said the government would seek the mandatory vote of confidence in Parliament ''well within the stipualted 30 days of assuming office.'' He reiterated his appeal to other parties to join the administration.

Nepal's constitutional monarch King Birendra appointed Koirala after the expiry of the deadline for filing claims of majority support in the Pratinidhi Sabha, the hung lower house of Nepal's bicameral parliament, on Wednesday evening. There was only one claim -- that of Koirala signed by 135 members of the 205-seat house -- at the Narayanhiti royal palace.

Koirala's supporters comprise 84 Nepali Congress MPs, 48 from the Communist Party of Nepal-Unified-Marxists-Leninists and three from the Nepal Sadbhavana Party.

With this appointment, Koirala has commenced his third tenure since the restoration of multiparty parliamentary democracy in Nepal eight years ago. He now also has the distinction of heading three differing shades of government -- majority, minority and coalition.

Earlier, following the May 1991 general election, Koirala headed a Nepali Congress majority government. In April this year, he was sworn in at the helm of an NC minority administration, which later coalesced in August with the Communist Party of Nepal-Marxist-Leninist, a splinter of the main opposition, the CPN-UML.

When CPN-UML pulled out on December 10, Nepal was plunged afresh into political turmoil, resolved only last Sunday when the NC and the CPN-UML struck a deal to form a ''national government'' of all political parties to oversee fresh election by mid-April, 1999.

Koriala, in tune to this, had resigned on Monday to pave way for the new government.

The lower house, elected in midterm polls in November 1994, has no single party commanding absolute majority. Due to the resultant political instability, the country has witnessed as many as six different governments in the past four years.

UNI

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