Deuba said his government's peace committee "has formally invited the Maoists to come to the negotiating table for peace talks."

He offered no details on when and where the talks would take place. He said the negotiations would be closed, amid criticism the last peace bid collapsed in August 2003 in part because of the intense media attention around meetings.

The Maoists have been fighting since 1996 to overthrow the monarchy in an insurgency that has claimed 10,000 lives.

The rebels, who enjoy free rein in much of the countryside, have demanded the government stop labelling them a terrorist group, which keeps their leaders away from cities for fear of arrest.

But Deuba said: "The terrorist tag labelled against the rebels will be withdrawn only when they come to the negotiating table."

A three-member delegation headed by Padma Ratna Tuladhar, a human rights activist with contacts with the Maoists, left Wednesday for the southwestern town of Nepalgunj to deliver the invitation to the Maoists, who control areas near the Indian border city.

"We are trying... to arrange for peace talks at an earliest date to end the present political and security problem in Nepal," Tuladhar told AFP before his departure.

A top Maoist leader, Krishna Bahadur Mahara, recently told a local newspaper that the rebels were ready to talk to the government if it stopped referring to the guerrillas as terrorists and released Maoists from prison.

The rebels have been building pressure on the government with a two-day strike set for next week during one of the Himalayan kingdom's most important festivals.

The Maoists in August used threats to stop traffic in and out of the capital Kathmandu for one week and to shut down 47 businesses.

The industries reopened a month later when the government released two prominent rebels from jail.

Meanwhile, Maoist rebels fighting to overthrow Nepal's monarchy bombed a rural health post administering vaccine for measles, one of the most severe diseases in the Himalayan kingdom, officials said Thursday.