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Nepal king pledges political talks
 A protester in Kathmandu holds a banner ahead of the king's annual address. YOUR E-MAIL ALERTSKATHMANDU, Nepal (CNN) -- Under pressure to step down from power, Nepal's King Gyanendra early Friday vowed for "no delay in dialogue" with the country's political parties. The king, in his annual new year's address, also restated his call for a general election, which is scheduled for April 2007, with the "active participation of all political parties." For more than a week, Nepal has been gridlocked by protests, which were organized by the political parties to take place in the days ahead of the king's annual address. Dozens of protesters have been injured, at least three have been killed, and more than 750 have been arrested since the protests began. The parties were unseated from power in February 2005, when the king ousted interim Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba for failing to quell a decade-long Maoist insurgency. The monarch has called for dialogue with the parties in the past, but they have refused, saying the king's rule is not recognized by Nepal's constitution. In his midnight address, carried live on Nepalese television, King Gyanendra said, "Democracy demands restraint and all forms of extremism are incompatible with democracy." April 14 is the first day of Nepal's new year, which is 2063. The United States has demanded Gyanendra loosen his grip on power and "begin a dialogue" with the country's political parties, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said earlier this week. "The demonstrations, deaths, arrests and Maoist attacks in the past few days have shown there is more insecurity, not less," McCormack said Monday. "The king's continuing failure to bring the parties back into a process to restore democracy has compounded the problem." McCormack said the United States believes the king's decision "to impose direct palace rule in Nepal has failed in every regard." Organizers of the demonstrations -- in which thousands have defied a curfew and shoot-on-sight orders to spill into the streets of the capital, Kathmandu -- have vowed not to stop until King Gyanendra is gone. Sam Zafiri, Asia research director of Human Rights Watch, told CNN on Friday that the ordinary citizens of Nepal were anxious to see some concrete steps, particularly in "reining in" the security forces. He said people were caught between the human rights abuses of both the Maoists and the army. Earlier, the Nepal Bar Association said police opened fire on lawyers who staged a protest against the king's rule Thursday in Kathmandu, Several more lawyers were injured by police using batons to break up the demonstration, the association's Tikaram Bhattarai said. -- Senior International Correspondent Satinder Bindra, State Department Producer Elise Labott and journalists Deepesh Shrefpha and Sumnima Udas contributed to this report. 
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