Tuesday, August 30 2005 11:53 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Kathmandu: Leaders of two major opposition parties in Nepal abandoned yesterday (August 29, 2005) their support of the country's 15-year-old constitutional monarchy in anger at King Gyanendra's seizure of power in February.

A key committee of the country's oldest democratic party, the Nepali Congress, omitted support for the system from the party's statute for the first time in its 60-year-old history, members said.

Their decision will be put to a vote at the party's general convention beginning tomorrow.

"We have removed constitutional monarchy from the party's objectives," senior Congress leader Ram Sharan Mahat said.

"The relevance of monarchy will be kept open from now on and the party is not bound to constitutional monarchy now," he said.

"Constitutional monarchy was a sort of compromise between the King and the political forces in the country and since the King has violated the norms, we are not bound by the monarchy any more," he said.

The Nepal Communist Party-United Marxist and Leninist (NCP-UML), a Royalist as well as Leftwing party, made a similar decision.

A meeting of the party's central committee adopted a resolution to push for a democratic republic and an end to the "autocratic monarchy," party General Secretary Madhav Kumar Nepal said.

King Gyanendra's seizure of power and sacking of the elected government had undermined the "Historic People's Movement" that led to the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in 1990, he said.