There is a Nepali folk riddle that goes something like this: a farmer needs to take a goat, a tiger and a pile of grass across a narrow bridge to the other side of the stream. He can only take one thing at a time, but if he takes the grass first the tiger will eat the goat. If he takes the tiger, the goat will eat the grass. What does he do?

The UN's de Mistura mission must have encountered a similar problem while dealing with the government, army, Maoists, parliamentarians in Kathmandu this week. Of course, it would be great if you could trust the tiger not to eat up the goat, or if
you could talk the goat into not being greedy and leave the grass alone.

It would be lovely if everyone trusted each other, but it doesn't work that way in the real world. So you have to resort to what conflict resolution experts call 'sequencing'. De-escalation carried out in proper order so that there is no need for the two sides to distrust each other.

Luckily, the Nepal conflict is still a political one, and at the moment there is political will on both sides to resolve it through negotiations. As de Mistura himself said when he arrived, this has made his job much easier because the UN is usually being called to firefight in wars where the blaze is out of control.

The sticking point is still that the Maoists don't want to lay down their arms immediately because a) they don't trust the army and b) five of their own seven field commanders have expressed reservations. And the Nepal Army, as the armed force of a legitimate state power, doesn't want the Maoists to be put on the same pedestal and is against any kind of arms quarantine.

Intractable as these two positions may seem, a formula acceptable to the army and the Maoists is possible: both sides confine troops to barracks and keep weapons under monitored storage while the UN supervises the ceasefire and the runup to constituent assembly elections. The only disagreement is about whether those weapons should be under lock and key.

There is a consensus among the international community that the Maoists can't be a part of an interim setup while still openly carrying arms. And the Nepal Army, despite some ambitious jarsaps in the ranks, is so beholden to the UN for lucrative peacekeeping that it won't jeopardise that cash cow.

The trick now is to sequence the moves. Just like the smart farmer first took the goat across the bridge, then the grass. On the return trip he brought the goat back and took the tiger over and left him there with the grass. Finally, he lead the goat across.

The farmer used his head, and no one ate anyone up.