President gives parties three more days to form govt

President Dr Ram Baran Yadav has extended the government formation deadline by three days after a request from the four big parties.

Dr Yadav accepted the parties' request as the seven-day deadline to form a consensus government expired today.

Maoist chairman Prachanda met him at Shitwal Niwas in the evening and formally made the request to him.

Emerging from the Shital Niwas meeting, the Maoist chief said he was optimistic that the parties would be able to able to reach an agreement on the next government within the deadline.

"Considering the way the four parties have discussed this issue in the last two days, I'm pretty hopeful that there will be an agreement in three days," he said.

Earlier today, a meeting of CPN (Maoist), Nepali Congress, Unified Marxist Leninist (UML) and Madhesi Janadhikar Forum (MJF) had decided to ask the President for extension of the deadline. The four parties also formed a taskforce to prepare the common minimum programme (CMP) of the upcoming 'national unity government'.