The New Nation - Internet Edition

Reuters, Kathmandu

Leading a rebellion was a lot easier than running a country, Nepal's guerrilla chief-turned-prime minister was quoted as saying on Friday.

"Sometimes I feel it was more comfortable during the people's war," the 54-year-old Pushpa Kamal Dahal, known as Prachanda, was quoted as saying by the Nepali newspaper Kantipur on Friday.

Prachanda, the nom de guerre meaning "fierce", led a decade-long civil war against Nepal's former monarchy before joining the political mainstream in 2006.

He became premier after an April vote won by the Maoists on a promise of a "new Nepal", but it hasn't been easy running one of the world's poorest countries.

More than a third of Nepal's 27 million people live on less that a dollar a day.

Prachanda has been criticised by political parties on all sides for failing to provide relief to Nepalis.

Hardline Maoists are pressing Prachanda for a more "revolutionary" policy, while the centrist opposition and some of his own coalition partners criticise him for failing to return property seized by Maoists during the 1996-2006 civil war.

"There was comfort during the people's war, no tension," Rajdhani, another Nepali daily, quoted him as saying after a meeting with newspaper editors on Thursday.

Rights groups estimate 13,000 people were killed during the 1996-2006 war, during which the Maoists regularly bombed major infrastructure such as power plants and bridges.