BANGKOK-Nepal expects the United States will ultimately resume its military assistance to fight Maoists despite its criticism of the takeover by the king two months ago, a top Nepali official told Thai media last week.

"I believe that there will be cooperation, there are certain problems but I think it will work out between the US and Nepal," said Sharad Chandra Shaha, vice-chairman of a new High Level Commission for Information Technology. "We need helicopters, light arms, visual-radars, these are the kind of things which make such a lot of difference. That's what we want in terms of support from Washington," said Shaha, who was here to attend a regional IT meet. He spoke to journalists at the Foreign Correspondent's Club on 26 March and was accompanied by Yadav Khanal, charge d'affaires of the Nepali embassy in Bangkok.

When questioned about bloggers in Nepal bypassing censorship, Shaha said he was unaware of it. He said there would be no crackdown against Nepal's bold bloggers, which include www.blog.com and freenepal.blogspot.com. "They are free to do it. All you have to do is put it on the Internet and send it, right? What is the problem?" Shaha said. He defended media censorship, saying papers were exaggerating Maoists attacks and making them "sound as if they are larger than life". He added: "You are from the press and you probably don't like it but to some extent, a little bit of control of the press has seen to this problem." (Richard S Ehrlich)