Illness keeps Nepal prime minister from celebrations

NEPAL’S newly-appointed prime minister was forced to miss a victory rally yesterday because of an illness which may keep him away from the reopened parliament.

The king formally named Girija Prasad Koirala as the strife-torn country’s new prime minister, just minutes after a spokesman said the veteran politician was on oxygen because of a lung ailment.

An unspecified illness kept Mr Koirala, 84, from a victory rally in Kathmandu hours earlier, and marred a day that began with communist rebels announcing a three-month ceasefire.