Fresh pro-democracy protests broke out in Nepal on Friday despite King Gyanendra's pledge to hold elections in the Himalayan kingdom, as activists said he offered nothing new or substantive. Groups of protesters took to the streets of the capital Kathmandu hours after the king's midnight message. Riot police arrested about 20 demonstrators, but there was no violence. Political parties leading the movement against the king were quick to reject his offer for elections, saying the monarch's message -- broadcast at the start of the Nepali Hindu New Year -- would not defuse the fierce campaign in which four people have been killed and hundreds wounded in the past week alone. "If the king doesn't listen to the voice of the people, I can only say, 'god save the king'," Girija Prasad Koirala, president of Nepal's largest political party, told Reuters in an interview. Nepalis had hoped the king's traditional new year message would contain some new steps to ease tensions but it was largely a repeat of earlier promises to hold elections by April 2007. He sacked the government and assumed total power in February 2005. "It is our wish that in order to re-energize multi-party democracy there should not be any delay in reactivating all representative bodies through elections," the king said. "May the efforts at ensuring sustainable peace and meaningful democracy in the interests of the nation and the people bear fruit during the new year."
