Kathmandu, July 18 - In his new report on Nepal, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon called the discharge of child soldiers from Maoist camps 'long overdue' and urged the government to do it at a 'brisk pace'.

The quarterly report, released in Nepal Saturday, will be discussed by the UN Security Council next week.

Ban said while Nepali Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal's pledge to give priority to the discharge of over 4,000 disqualified combatants of the Maoists People's Liberation Army (PLA) was encouraging, it was important that plans for the discharge continued at a brisk pace in the coming weeks.

The report comes after Nepal Friday began the process of discharging nearly 3,000 child soldiers and about 1,000 illegal recruits inducted after the signing of the 2006 peace pact that ended a decade of armed insurrection.

Ban has pointed out that the special committee set up to supervise, integrate and rehabilitate about 19,000 Maoist army personnel with the national army has become dormant because of the ongoing political crisis.

During the previous government led by the Maoists, their chief and prime minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda headed the committee.

However, with Prachanda resigning in May after a dispute over sacking the army chief, the committee remains headless.

'The absence of an agreement on who should now chair the committee has contributed to the stagnation of the committee's work,' the report said.

A technical committee under the special committee visited three PLA army cantonment sites to formulate possible integration models. But these were yet to be translated into a plan due to the political uncertainty, the UN chief said.

The UN chief is asking Nepal's Peace and Reconstruction ministry, that is leading the discharge drive, to review and build on the 'support packages' devised for discharged combatants by the ministry and four UN agencies, including Unicef.

'The discharge of the disqualified is long overdue,' The Un chief said.