Kathmandu: A meeting of political parties in Nepal to discuss the dramatic sacking of caretaker Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba and the temporary takeover of power by the king, was cancelled on October 6, officials said.

Leaders of all seven parties in the dissolved Parliament, including Deuba, were due to meet on October 6 to discuss a joint strategy on the Constitutional crisis, as well as to launch a protest action.

However, officials said the meeting was cancelled because one of the parties was unable to attend. It was not clear when the meeting would now take place.

King Gyanendra announced October 4 that he was dismissing Deuba and the Cabinet and had suspended national elections due to start next month.

Gyanendra, a Constitutional monarch whose role is supposedly largely ceremonial, said he would take political power until he nominated a new Prime Minister next week, but did not give a time frame for new polls.

The king said he had sacked Deuba because he was not qualified to preside over the elections.

The dismissal came after Deuba requested that the elections be postponed for one year because of the Maoist rebellion that has claimed some 5,000 lives in a six-year struggle for a communist republic.

The leader of the Maoist rebels criticised the king's move, saying it was aimed at thwarting Democracy.

"The dismissal of the Prime Minster, the entire Cabinet and assuming the executive powers to maintain law and order by the king is the final blow against the achievements of the 1990 people's movement," said Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachand, in a statement faxed to newspapers in Kathmandu on October 5.

The 1990 movement succeeded in abolishing the 30-year partyless system of autocratic rule and reestablishing Democracy.

"The palace has exposed its face by using the Royal rights, which it did not even have, against the people's sovereign rights," Prachand said.

He appealed for a joint movement against the king's move, which he said was "retrogressive".

On October 5 around 300 people from the student wing of a Communist Party demonstrated in Kathmandu against the king's move, while about 1,000 staged a march in support of Gyanendra.

Deuba, who has already moved out of the Prime Minister's official residence, has told party workers his sacking was undemocratic.