Nepal's Maoist guerrillas have accused the UN of hatching a plot to disarm and weaken them, an allegation that has been rejected by the top UN envoy in Nepal.

The charge has been made by rebel chief Prachanda who told a gathering of journalists outside Kathmandu valley Monday that he had evidence to substantiate the allegation.

The rebels are disturbed that a UN agency is circulating a report in Nepal on how rebels in Sudan were disarmed and demobilised.

However, when the Maoists signed a peace pact with the Nepal government last year, they made it clear that they were not disarming or disbanding.

Their soldiers have been confined in seven cantonments and their arms have been locked up in storage containers that are also in the cantonments.

The Maoists hold the keys to the locks, though the UN Mission in Nepal (UNMIN) oversaw the locking up and took an inventory.

Instead of disbanding the People's Liberation Army (PLA) of the Maoists, the Nepal government has agreed to merge them with the Nepal Army, provided they meet the eligibility criteria.

The appearance of the Sudan report is being regarded by the guerrillas as the first step towards disarming and disbanding them before the crucial election scheduled in November.

However, the allegation was refuted by UNMIN chief Ian Martin, who said the Maoists were suffering from a misunderstanding.

'The Maoists, as well as many others, have shown an interest in international experience with security sector reform as well as with demobilisation and reintegration arrangements, and have asked to have international experience shared with them,' Martin said at a separate media briefing in the capital Monday.

'In that context, someone on behalf of UN Development Programme shared with them a report, which is not even a United Nations report.

'It is simply something produced by researchers at one institution surveying what's happened in a number of countries. That was not intended to carry with it any suggestion that any of those particular experiences were relevant to Nepal.'

Martin also said that the UN had no hidden agenda in Nepal.

The Maoist accusation comes at a time the UNMIN, while verifying the number of Maoist soldiers, has indicated the presence of child soldiers and people recruited illegally after the peace pact.

The guerrillas are irked by that and have stopped the verification process, saying they would like to hold further talks before it resumed.

Even earlier, the rebels had stalled the verification process to pressure the government into paying monthly allowances to the barracked guerrillas.

Now Prachanda is demanding that the militant youth wing of the Maoists, the Young Communist League (YCL), be allowed to police the November election.

The general feeling is that the guerrillas have begun trading charges - at the UN, Indian fundamentalists and royalists - to deflect attention from the YCL's misdeeds and force the government to make further concessions.

On Monday, a cabinet meeting agreed to register the vehicles used by the Maoists, several of which are said to have been grabbed illegally by force.