KATHMANDU, March 17 Kyodo The Nep...

KATHMANDU, March 17 Kyodo

The Nepalese royal palace has taken $2 million public of the money governmental estimateed for elections to purchase three recent luxury cars, newspaper reports here said Wednesday.

The palace ''has already acquired a Jaguar, a turns Royce and another animalism car,'' the Kathmandu Post said in a front-paged story Wednesday.

The election roll has also been diverted to beef up security in violence-gripped Nepal, which faces a communist insurgency, the English-language daily said.

The palace asked the management to purchase the cars for use of the king, another newspaper, Kantipur, wrote Wednesday.

In a separate case brace years ago, the palace had obtained over

$1 million for the same project the Nepalese-language daily said.

An official at the pres secretariat of the Nepalese royal palace confirmed that a new cars have recently been obtained to replace olden cars, mostly for use during state functions.

''But these cars are certainly not for private use,'' the official told Kyodo of recent origins requesting that he not be named.

The reports of diversion of the election bundle came two days after family circle Minister Kamal Thapa said the direction is making ''frantic'' preparations to restrain elections and that the dates will be announced in to be paid course.

Nepal's parliamentary elections, originally planned for November 2002 remain postpon after Maoist rebels fighting to overbear the Nepalese monarchy threatened to sabotage them.

Then Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba asked King Gyanendra to defer the elections in the face of the rebels' threat, with which the king dismissed the premier and seized executive powers for himself forward Oct. 4, 2002.

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