Five of the nine secretariat members of the then CPN met at Hattiban Sunday evening.
Pushpa Kamal Dahal, Madhav Kumar Nepal, Jhala Nath Khanal, Bam Dev Gautam and Narayan Kaji Shrestha discussed contemporary politics, national sovereignty, local election, communist and socialist movement, coalition with Nepali Congress (NC) and other issues during the meeting, according to Khanal.
The leaders also agreed to continue the discussion.
When asked if his party CPN (Unified Socialist) has any chance of unification with CPN (Maoist Center), Khanal did not rule that out and said there are endless possibilities. "We didn't have fundamental differences earlier and even now. We will have to discuss in detail how the situation turned this way," he stated. "I have been for left unity from the beginning. We will hold discussion about how to move forward from there."
He, however, ruled out ending the current ruling coalition with NC. "We have not thought otherwise about coalition now. Coalition remains but we must also move forward learning from yesterday's experiences. We must think about how to expand possibilities of coalition," he elaborated. "The main thing is independence of the country and the people and progress of this country through prosperity toward socialism (sic). We concur that we must think by keeping that at center."
Addressing Maoist Center's central committee meeting that started earlier on Sunday, Maoist Chairman Dahal said that the majority of the nine secretariat members of the then CPN, formed after unification of CPN-UML and Maoist Center, are trying to jointly appeal for comprehensive unity of communist parties.
The two parties had allied for the last general election with commitment for post-election unification and together secured almost two-third majority.
Four of the nine CPN secretariat members—KP Sharma Oli, Ishwar Pokharel, Ram Bahadur Thapa and Bishnu Paudel—are now with UML, Dahal and Narayan Kaji Shrestha with Maoist Center, and Madhav Kumar Nepal and Jhala Nath Khanal with CPN (Unified Socialist).
Bam Dev Gautam was expelled from CPN (Unity National Campaign) that he announced on Tuesday to pursue left unity on Saturday.
