Nepal hands over funds to build Maoist rebel camps

KATHMANDU, Nov 27 (Reuters) Nepal's multi-party government handed 1.4 million dollars to Maoist rebels today to pay for the setting up of camps that will house guerrilla fighters under a peace deal signed last week, a senior minister said.

''We have provided the money as an installment which will meet the cost of setting up cantonments for the Maoist army and their maintenance,'' Gopal Man Shrestha, minister for physical planning and works, told Reuters after a cabinet meeting.

''They will have to give proper records of how it is spent to the government,'' he said.

Last week, the government and Maoists inked a landmark peace agreement declaring a formal end to the decade-old insurgency in which more than 13,000 people have died.

Under the peace deal, and before they join an interim government by Dec. 1, the Maoists have to restrict their 35,000 fighters to 28 camps across the country and store their weapons in seven locations under the watch of United Nations monitors.

The government must also confine its 90,000-strong army to barracks and lock up an equal number of its arms in the run-up to next year's elections for a special assembly, which would write a new constitution for Nepal and decide the fate of its monarchy.

But UN officials say the weapon storage arrangements will not be in place by December 1, something that could delay the rebels joining the interim government.

Today, government negotiators, rebel commanders and U.N.

officials continued to hammer out the details of how to monitor the arms, a controversial issue which delayed the peace deal for months.

REUTERS LL HT2104