KATHMANDU, Nepal — Nepal's beleaguered prime minister, Girija Prasad Koirala, resigned Thursday over a Maoist insurgency that has spread rapidly across the impoverished Himalayan kingdom.
Koirala's exit came six weeks after the massacre of most of Nepal's royal family, a development that intensified opposition demands for his resignation over corruption allegations.
"I have decided to resign to make way for new initiatives to solve various problems facing the country," Koirala said in a prerecorded statement on state radio and television.
"The country now is passing through a very serious situation. The attack by the Maoists is directed not only against the democracy of the country but it is also directed at disturbing national security and integrity."
The new king, Gyanendra — the brother of the monarch who was slain along with eight members of his family by the drunken Crown Prince Dipendra on June 1 — accepted the prime minister's resignation.
Koirala, 78, rode to power for the fourth time in March last year on an anti-corruption ticket.
He had also promised to stamp out the Maoist rebellion aimed at toppling the constitutional monarchy. The rebellion has claimed some 1,750 lives since it started in 1996.
The Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) rebels — who draw their inspiration from Peru's Shining Path guerrillas and specialize in hit-and-run attacks on poorly armed police posts — are fighting to set up a one-party communist republic.
Koirala resigned as government troops closed in on rebels who have been holding 70 policemen hostage in the remote western district of Rolpa for more than a week.
The Maoists had vowed to hold peace talks to seek an end to the revolt if Koirala stepped down. They also offered to free their captives if the government released their comrades, but officials rejected the offer.
Some felt Koirala hung on too long.
"He was stubborn as a mule," Kunda Dixit, editor of the English weekly Nepali Times told Reuters.
"It (the resignation) is an indication of how powerful he was that it took the combined efforts of dissidents within his own party, the entire opposition and the Maoists to bring him down after more than six months."
Koirala's Nepali Congress Party, which has 10 deputies more than a majority in the 205-seat lower House of Representatives, will have to choose another prime minister from its ranks.
Deputy Prime Minister Ram Chandra Poudel resigned last Friday following differences with Koirala over how to contain the Maoist violence, which gained momentum after the palace massacre.
Koirala had been criticized for failing to inform the country promptly about the massacre of King Birendra and his family.
The opposition Communist Unified Marxist-Leninist party, which spearheaded the "Oust Koirala" campaign, had also accused him of failing to protect policemen under attack from the insurgents and of mishandling the hostage crisis.
Koirala had been under pressure to step down even before the palace bloodbath and the increase in Maoist violence because of allegations stemming from an aircraft leasing deal by the state airline from Austria's Lauda Air. He has denied any wrongdoing.
Earlier Thursday, Nepal scrapped the controversial deal for Royal Nepal Airline Corp. to lease a Boeing 767 from Lauda Air.