Kathmandu, July 17 - As Nepal's new government Friday began the process of releasing child soldiers held in Maoist camps as a step towards bolstering the peace process, a Buddhist priest said he would add to the efforts by exorcising the 'ghosts of war'.

Born Phurba Tasi Gurung in one of the biggest and most inaccessible districts of Nepal, the mountainous Dolpa in the north, the 36-year-old lama is now revered as the fifth reincarnation of a Tibetan high priest and is known as Guru Ranag Tulku Rinchen Rinpoche.

The boy priest left home at the age of six after he was recognised as the reincarnation of the lama and spent several years studying Tibetan Buddhism and its intricacies in Kathmandu and India's Dehradun city.

The founder of a school for orphans in Kathmandu, Gurung has been residing in Taiwan for the last 10 years, where he runs a Buddhist centre, the Thupten Tsering Centre.

For two days from Saturday, the priest will hold an elaborate exorcism ritual, the 'Vajrasattva puja', to lay the ghosts of the armed insurrection to peace.