Maoists apologise for Constituent Assembly brawl

Maoist supremo Prachanda today apologised for his party's role in the Constituent Assembly brawl in Nepal that injured 14 people and admitted that it was a "mistake" but remained adamant on contentious issues of Constitution drafting.
"The confrontation in the constituent assembly meeting on Tuesday morning was a mistake," said UCPN-Maoist chief Pushpa Kamal Dahal, better known as Prachanda.
He said his party will investigate the matter to find out the truth.
Twelve security personnel and two prominent leaders of the ruling CPN-UML were injured and some furniture was broken as the Maoist lawmakers stormed the Parliament in a bid to halt the process of drafting the Constitution through voting.

"We express our regret for what has happened in the Parliament on Tuesday which was not in line with our party's policy," Prachanda told journalists.
"We had no intention of starting a fight but the situation got out of control," Prachanda said.

He said the party had asked its lawmakers to disrupt proceedings but matters got out of hand when ruling party politicians attempted to move ahead with a vote on the terms of the Constitution without forging consensus.
The incident occurred when the ruling parties were trying to push their proposal for a new draft Constitution through voting before tomorrow's deadline.

Prachanda said that the negotiations should continue between the ruling and opposition alliances on key issues of the Constitution in a bid to forge consensus even if they miss the deadline to draft the statuette.
He said that his party was ready to negotiate on other issues including forms of governance and electoral system if the ruling alliance is ready to ensure ethnic and regional identities will be kept in mind while adopting a federal model for the country in the new Constitution.
"We will not compromise for ethnic identity based federal structure to be incorporated in the new Constitution," he said.

Party Vice-chairman Baburam Bhattarai also apologised for incidents of attacks on journalists during reporting of yesterday's countrywide general strike called by the 19-party alliance led by the UCPN-Maoists to oppose voting for adopting the new Constitution.