Kathmandu, Feb. 11 -- The Standing Committee of the CPN (Maoist Centre) has failed to iron out several issues including the party's core political principle.

The party is in intense discussion to prepare a draft statute to be presented in its first ever statute convention that kicks off in Kathmandu on Tuesday. During the two-day meeting of the Standing Committee, its members had no unanimity on whether the party should establish itself as one embracing multi-party democracy or take a line of "revolutionary communism".

The committee spent ample time discussing why the party failed to develop a new crop of leaders. "Among concerns that leadership development had stalled in the party, we had intense discussions on the issue," Ganesh Shah,...