Nepal's rebel Maoists continue to force people to join their army despite an impending landmark peace deal with the government, rights workers and newspaper reports said on Sunday.
"The Maoist rebels have forcefully recruited more than 1,500 people, most of them children under 18, in the last week," Kundan Aryal, general secretary of Informal Sector Service (INSEC), a leading human rights watchdog, told AFP.
The recruitment drive was in direct contradiction to the ceasefire code of conduct reached in May, when the rebels agreed to stop all forms of recruitment, Aryal said.
The rebels and government were due Tuesday to sign a landmark peace deal that would end the decade-long rebel insurgency.
The Maoists agreed to place their weapons and army under United Nations supervision in return for being allowed to enter government.
"The rebels have taken people from at least 24 districts, which cover the Maoist proposed cantonment sites across the country, since November 12," said Aryal.
The rebels have agreed to contain their People's Liberation Army and weapons in seven different areas across the country. The camps would be supervised by the United Nations.
Nepal's Maoists have claimed their army was 35,000-strong, but other sources put their fighting force at closer to 12,000 people.
Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala Saturday asked the Maoists to stop recruiting rebel combatants.
"Government attention has been drawn by the Maoists' act of recruiting children in their People's Liberation Army. I urge the Maoists to stop such activities," Koirala was quoted as saying in the Nepali daily Kantipur. The rebels denied they had stepped up recruitment.
"We have not recruited children in our People's Liberation Army, but summoned all our party cadres who had gone to their homes after the ceasefire," Dina Nath Sharma, a rebel peace negotiator, told AFP.
"We know that the United Nations will not recognize arbitrary recruitment. We will verify all our combatants at the presence of the UN and press before keeping them in the cantonments," said Sharma.
The two sides agreed earlier this month to end the conflict that has killed at least 12,500 people since 1996.
This is the third time the rebels have tried to hammer out a peace deal. Two previous attempts in 2001 and 2003 failed, plunging the country back into conflict.