KATHMANDU (AFP) — Nepal's government said Friday it has started an audit of palace property and sent an official letter telling King Gyanendra to leave after a historic assembly abolished the monarchy.
The ousted Hindu 'god-king', given a two-week eviction order, has kept a studied silence behind the high walls of his pink-hued Narayanhiti palace, although the royal flag has come down from over the heavily guarded complex.
"An official letter has been dispatched from the government asking Gyanendra Shah to vacate the palace," Information Minister Krishna Bahadur Mahara told AFP.
"A high-level committee has been formed to prepare the details of the property inside the palace. All the property will be transferred to national property," he added.
A constitutional assembly, dominated by former rebel Maoists, voted late Wednesday to abolish Gyanendra's 240-year-old Shah dynasty -- capping a peace process that ended a decade-long civil war.
Some 13,000 people were killed in the insurgency launched by the Maoists in 1996 to install a communist republic in the world's only Hindu kingdom.
An estimated 1,500 soldiers guard the king, but Nepal's army -- seen as a bastion of royalists -- said they will comply with the decision, which also involves turning the royal palace in Kathmandu into a museum.
Nepal has been brimming for weeks with rumours over the king's plans, with each and every departure from the palace in recent days -- including a weekend trip to his summer home and a drive to his sister's house for tea -- watched with bated breath.
Kishore Shrestha, a newspaper editor whose publication regularly runs scoops on palace affairs, said the ousted king's son Paras moved his belonging out overnight but added that "the king is still inside."
Gyanendra, considered by loyalists to be a reincarnation of a Hindu god, ascended to the throne in 2001 after most of the royal family were slain by a drugged, drunk, lovelorn and suicidal prince.
But the new king failed to win the support of the public, many of whom believed conspiracy theories linking him to the killings.
His unpopularity deepened when he sacked the government and embarked on a period of autocratic rule in early 2005. Mass protests led to a landmark peace agreement in 2006 that saw the king increasingly sidelined.
Many ordinary Nepalese are delighted to see the back of the dour king as well as his would-be heir, Paras -- who is widely loathed for his reported playboy lifestyle in one of the world's poorest countries.
International reaction to the monarchy's demise has focused on calls for Nepal's government to end months of political in-fighting and concentrate on lifting the mountainous, landlocked country out of poverty.
While the United States is not yet prepared to strike the Maoists from its terrorist blacklist, Washington has reversed its previous policy of not talking with the group's leaders.
Britain sent its congratulations after the assembly's first session.
Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch Brown called it "another step toward the democratic and stable future that the people of Nepal justly deserve."
But there is still no clear political direction, with Maoists and political parties wrangling over who will lead the next government.
Their leader Prachanda -- whose nom de guerre means "the fierce one" -- insisted that the Maoists should head the government.
"We won't accept a president from another party which has been defeated in the elections," the guerilla leader-turned-politician told a crowd of around 3,000 Maoists at a rally in Kathmandu on Friday to celebrate the new republic.
"Nobody has a majority, but as the largest party, people have given us the mandate to lead the government," said Prachanda, who has said he is willing to become Nepal's first president "if the masses want to give me the responsibility."
A small bomb went off near the rally but injured no one, police said.
Kathmandu has seen a string of small explosions this week that authorities believe are the work of Hindu fundamentalists opposed to a secular nation but overall violence levels are sharply down since the peace process began.
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