KATHMANDU -- Nepal freed two top jailed Maoist leaders on Sunday, meeting a key rebel condition for the start of peace talks toward ending a revolt that has killed more than 7,200 people.

Rebels Krishna Dhoj Khadka and his wife, Rekha Sharma, both members of the powerful Central Committee of the Maoist Group, are the most senior leaders freed since a cease-fire agreed more than two months ago.

"Yes, they have been freed," district official Sagar Mani Pathak said by telephone from Gorkha, 150km (93 miles) west of Kathmandu, where the two have been held since last year.

A team of five Maoist negotiators emerged in public in March, fueling hopes for an early start to the delayed peace talks after an indefinite cease-fire with the government in January.

Both sides have vowed to resolve the conflict through negotiations but have fixed no date for the meeting so far.

The Maoists have insisted on the release of five jailed central committee members, including Khadka and Sharma, before starting the talks.

"We take this as a positive step. It would have been better if the government had released all five," Krishna Bahadur Mahara, a member of the Maoist negotiating team, told Reuters.

He said the rebels would now decide about starting the negotiations.

Baburam Bhattarai, the chief Maoist negotiator, told Indian daily the **Hindustan Times** in an interview published on Sunday they wanted the people to elect a constituent assembly and draft a Constitution that would fix the monarch's role.

"Our basic agenda is to form a republican state. If the king abdicates voluntarily, we will offer him some position," said Bhattarai. "It will be good if he agrees to play the role of Norodom Sihanouk," he added, referring to the Cambodian leader.

Early in 1996, the Maoists began fighting to topple Nepal's constitutional monarchy and set up a communist state, which they call their ultimate goal.

They now seek talks with all the major political parties to prepare the way for an interim government to oversee elections for an assembly to prepare a new Constitution.

The guerrillas say the present Constitution, prepared in 1990, was "dead" after King Gyanendra, vaulted to the throne after the 2001 palace massacre, fired an elected prime minister last October and named a staunch monarchist in his place. The king's move came after the then prime minister sought to delay parliamentary elections because of the Maoist threat to derail the vote. No date has been fixed for the elections so far.