KATHMANDU - LAWMAKERS in Nepal are to vote this week on who will be the country's first post-royal premier, after Maoists and their rivals failed to form a consensus government, officials said on Monday.

The Maoists and Nepal's mainstream parties have been wrangling for months over who will become prime minister, leaving the country in political limbo.

In elections held in April, the former rebels won the most seats in a new constitutional assembly but not an outright majority needed to govern alone - and other parties are demanding they have key portfolios.

Nepal has not had a proper government since the abolition of the monarchy in May, and officials said that with the dispute still unresolved the matter will now go to a straight vote in the constitutional assembly.

'The working committee of the constituent assembly announced today that voting for choosing the prime minister will take place on Friday,' said Mr Manohar Prasad Bhattarai, general secretary of the assembly.

'The parties will nominate their candidates on Thursday.'

The Nepali Congress - the country's oldest party - said it was ready to have a Maoist prime minister, but did not want the former rebels to have all the key cabinet positions because they had yet to fully disarm.

'We want the Maoists to head the government but they must give up their rigidness of keeping the home, defence and finance ministries,' said Nepali Congress spokesman Arjun Narsingh Khatri Chettri.

The Maoists, however, have have said that including politicians from rival parties in senior positions will hobble the government and hamper the leftists' radical reform agenda.

'There is no point in leading a government if we don't get the key portfolios. We will have our hands and legs tied,' senior Maoist Dev Gurung said.

They were willing to accept rival parties in government, but only in lesser roles, Mr Gurung said.

'The major parties are now in agreement that we should lead the government and we are negotiating to share power with Congress and other parties but differences remain in sharing out the ministerial portfolios,' he said.

The Maoists began battling to turn Nepal into a communist republic in 1996 and fought the Himalayan country's security forces to a bloody standstill in the conflict that claimed at least 13,000 lives.

The ending of the country's 240-year-old monarchy was a major victory for the fiercely republican Maoists but their transition from feared guerrillas to a mainstream political force has not been smooth.

Critics say that they have yet to fully abandon violence and that their feared youth wing - the Young Communist League - must disband to prove they are committed to peaceful democracy. -- AFP