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> Fresh protests in Nepal despite king's pledge. 15/04/2006. ABC News Online
> [This is the print version of story http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200604/s1616565.htm]
> Last Update: Saturday, April 15, 2006. 0:09am (AEST)

> Pro-democracy activists shout anti-monarch slogans during protests in Kathmandu (Reuters) |

> # Fresh protests in Nepal despite king's pledge

> More pro-democracy protests broke out in Nepal on Friday despite King Gyanendra's pledge to hold elections in the Himalayan kingdom, as activists said he offered nothing new or substantive.

> Groups of protesters took to the streets of the capital Kathmandu hours after the king's midnight message, chanting "Gyanendra, thief, quit the country" and "Down with autocracy, end police repression".

> Riot police arrested about 20 demonstrators, but there was no violence.

> Scattered protests continued through the day, but were not as intense as in previous days because it was a holiday for the Nepali Hindu New Year.

> Political parties leading the movement against the king were quick to reject his offer for elections, saying the monarch's new year message would not defuse the fierce campaign in which four people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the past week.

> "If the king doesn't listen to the voice of the people, I can only say, 'god save the king'," Girija Prasad Koirala, president of Nepal's largest political party, told Reuters in an interview.

> Nepalis had hoped the king's traditional new year message would contain some new steps to ease tensions but it was largely a repeat of earlier promises to hold elections by April 2007.

> He sacked the government and assumed total power in February 2005.

> "It is our wish that in order to re-energise multi-party democracy there should not be any delay in reactivating all representative bodies through elections," the king said.

> Senior leaders of an alliance of Nepal's seven main political parties, who are demanding the restoration of a representative government immediately, said his offer was too little, too late.

> "He did not address the problem of the nation, he should have done that," said Koirala, 84, a four-time prime minister.

> -Reuters

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