KATHMANDU, Nov 15 (Reuters) - Nepal's Maoist insurgents have embarked on a recruitment drive ahead of signing a peace deal this week, residents and media reports said on Wednesday, with hundreds of young men and boys forced to join the rebel army. Under the deal supposed to end a 10-year insurgency, the Maoists say they will place their 35,000-strong rebel force in specially established camps and keep their weapons under lock and key, with Nepal's army also promising to stay in its barracks. But as the clock ticks towards the signing, more than 400 people have been forced to join the Maoists in the Surkhet and Dailekh districts of western Nepal in the past three days, according to the The Kathmandu Post daily. Villagers from Kohalpur near the western town of Nepalgunj told Reuters that dozens of young men, including schoolboys as young as 15, were taken from their village by the Maoists. "They were taken by the Maoists who promised to recruit them in their army," Om Prakash Oli, chief of a school management committee in Kohalpur village, 320 km (200 miles) west of Kathmandu, said by telephone. "Parents are worried about their children." The Maoists denied they were responsible but the government said it was a violation of a code of conduct signed in May, shortly after peace talks began and a ceasefire was agreed. "They must stop these types of activities immediately," Ram Chandra Poudel, head of the state's Peace Committee, told Reuters. The peace deal was agreed in principle last week. In return for confining their forces to camps, the rebels will join an interim government and parliament. But reports of extortion and recruitment have continued to flood in from the countryside since the ceasefire was agreed. The rebels deny any recruitment. "We are ourselves preparing to keep our army in camps. Why should we recruit more?" asked senior Maoist leader Dina Nath Sharma, a rebel negotiator. More than 13,000 people have died since the Maoist conflict began in 1996 to topple the monarchy. Peace talks began after King Gyanendra ended absolute rule and handed power back to political parties following weeks of democracy protests in April.
