In a serious setback to the peace process, the last remaining Maoist official in Kathmandu was detained briefly Thursday morning for questioning.

The incident came amidst reports that the entire top leadership of the Maoists who surfaced four months ago for talks had either slipped away to India, or gone underground.

The official, Bharat Dhungana, works at the Maoist liaison office in Anamnagar and was picked up near Krishna Mandir in Patan at 6:30 on Thursday morning. He was blindfolded and driven in a red van for an hour before questioning. "They asked me if our leaders are returning, whether talks will be held," Dhungana recounted. He was also asked who collected 'donation' money in the office. After this, the interrogators put a Nepali cap on Dhungana, drove him around before leaving him at the police office in Jawalakhel.

Asked how the incident could affect the peace process, Dhungana said: "It will definitely make the leaders think twice about coming back for talks without security guarantees." The questioning appears to be a crude attempt to provoke the Maoists, and some analysts see the hand of hardline elements who want to disrupt the prospect of talks.

In the past three weeks, Maoist leaders have been disappearing one by one. Baburam Bhattarai was in Kalikot, and is believed to have gone on to attend the Revolutionary International Movement (RIM) meeting at Chattisgarh in India. He later came to the New Delhi suburb of Noida where he met Nepali human rights activists last week. This is the first time that the Maoists haven't bothered to hide their collective presence in India.

Krishna Bahadur Mahara also flew to Nepalganj and then on to Delhi last week carrying a letter from Kamal Thapa to Baburam Bhattarai. Ram Bahadur Thapa (Badal) told officials in Kathmandu over the weekend that he was going to Kalikot, but after flying to Nepalganj on Tuesday, reportedly took a motorcycle to Bardia and then slipped into India to join his comrades.

Till press time, there was no answer from Bhattarai to Kamal Thapa\'s letter. The future of the talks now seems to rest on that answer, and whether it addresses the points that Baburam Bhattarai laid out when Surya Bahadur Thapa became prime minister six weeks ago. These include whether or not agreements made with the earlier negotiating team about the army being restricted to five km of barracks is still valid, and the government's position on army mobilisation.

Paradoxically, there hasn't really been a major violation of the six-month old ceasefire. It's just that the peace talks started in May got stuck after the Thapa government replaced Lokendra Bahadur Chand. So who is trying to wreck the ceasefire? Some political analysts say both the palace and the Maoists may not necessarily want to derail the peace process, but they want to delay it because conditions are not right to resume talks at present.

More than the Maoists, it appears that the government wants to deliberately let things drift a bit. The thinking could be to widen what is seen as a growing rift between the grassroots cadre and the Maoist leadership. And the Maoist response to this could be a premeditated disappearing act that will send alarm bells ringing. Those alarm bells have rung, and the Nepali public is increasingly apprehensive that fighting may resume any day, taking the war into a more vicious and brutal phase.

There have also been changes in the regional geopolitics in the past month: the India-China rapprochement after Vajpayee's Beijing visit, the strong American reaction to the Bhutani refugee verification results which seems to have irked New Delhi no end. In the midst of heightened Indo-US tensions over Nepal, the Maoists have gone all out to attack "American imperialism" but have remained mysteriously silent about India. Kathmandu's relations with New Delhi, meanwhile, is still stuck with little or no progress in any of the bilateral border, trade, security and political issues.

On the ground, the ceasefire has been a period in which a dangerous new arms race has started between the two forces. While the Maoists have been training and smuggling in weapons, explosives and ammunition, the Royal Nepali Army has been augmenting hardware and adding men-under-arms. There have been media reports of major hauls of Nepal-bound arms and ammunition for the Maoists in Bangladesh and in Uttar Pradesh this month.

In fact, except for the absence of major battles, the ceasefire period has been characterised by competition between the two sides over who can violate more provisions of their agreed upon Code of Conduct.