KATHMANDU, Jan 15: Nepal’s rebel Maoists were confirmed as members of parliament on Monday as political parties that were once bitter foes brought an end to a decade of civil war, witnesses said.

“Today is a day of reconciliation among all the political parties and the people,” Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala said in parliament.

The rebels will hold 83 of the 330 seats in the unicameral legislature and their members will break ground by including representatives from the Hindu-majority nation’s lower caste for the first time in parliament.

“I, being the prime minister with the consent of the seven parties, want to assure all that I will never deviate from the democratic principles, for which I have been fighting for the past 60 years,” said the elderly and ailing prime minister before the former rebels came into parliament.

A new interim constitution was approved by the previous legislature earlier on Monday and brings the Maoists into the political mainstream.

The rebels have pledged to place arms and soldiers in specially appointed camps under UN supervision in a deal reached with an alliance of seven political parties in late 2006.

The two sides had joined hands to lead mass protests in April 2006 that brought an end to 14 months of direct rule by King Gyanendra who said he seized power to combat the rebels.

The rebels launched a deadly “people’s war” in 1996 to install a communist republic in the impoverished Himalayan nation. The conflict claimed at least 12,500 lives and badly affected Nepal’s already fragile economy.

The new parliament will oversee elections expected in June 2007 to a body that will draft a new permanent constitution, and tackle the controversial issue of the monarchy’s fate.—AFP