Your photograph of a beaming Dr Baburam Bhattrai (#285) with his interview was shocking and betrays the double standards of all the players in Nepal's political war. How can this man grin and not take responsibility for the thousands dead. And shame on you Nepali Times for having the cheek to publish it. Have you forgotten your journalistic ethics or do you remember them only when criticising those you oppose?

Name withheld, UK

. In his interview with Nepali Times, Baburam Bhattarai advises 'enlightened persons' to not get 'swayed by sentimentalism or idealism' when it comes to loss of Nepali lives. I am sorry, Mr Bhattarai, it does NOT take an 'enlightened' person to feel the pang of loss of loved ones. Of course it comes as no surprise that having ensconced himself in a safe-haven in India, to him Nepali lives are easily dispensable. If he asks the thousands who have been coerced into the Maoist forces, those families who have lost their loved ones and those who have been displaced, whether the 'sacrifice' is worth it, they would most likely reply in the negative, unlike Mr Bhattarai's 'affirmative' reply. As for the royal army being 'principally responsible for the high rate of loss of life', it was the Maoists who brought the army into the war with their initial attack on army barracks in Ghorahi, in 2001. Bhattarai's assertion that there is 'an increasing Maoist popularity in Nepal' is also a lie-support garnered at gunpoint cannot in any fair sense be construed as 'popularity'.

C Thapa