Nepal will scrap its almost 240-year-old monarchy on Wednesday. The newly-elected 575 members of the Nepal Constituent Assembly will meet on Wednesday and are expected to pass a resolution declaring Nepal a republic.

Abolishing the monarchy was a key part of the peace deal with Maoist former rebels, who emerged as the largest party in elections to the assembly in April.

The 575 lawmakers who took the oath of office on Tuesday are to govern Nepal as they rewrite the country's constitution, a key step in the peace process that ended a decade-long rebellion by communists called Maoists, who have since entered mainstream politics.

Another 26 legislators are still to be chosen by the assembly's major political parties.

The assembly, elected in April, begins working on Wednesday. Its first order of business is expected to be declaring Nepal a republic and doing away with the Shah dynasty, which dates to 1769 when a regional ruler conquered Kathmandu and united Nepal.

A ''republic will be declared tomorrow,'' Baburam Bhattarai, deputy leader of the Maoists, said after the ceremony. ''Once a republic is declared, the king will automatically lose his position and place in the palace.''

The Maoists hold the most seats in the assembly but are still struggling to form a government, and political violence has persisted despite the two-year peace process.

The chief of the UN mission in Nepal, Ian Martin, warned on Tuesday the violence threatens the peace process and criticized Nepal's politicians for doing little to stop it.

Politically motivated killings have been committed by virtually every major political group since the Maoists gave up their fight two years ago, and Martin said he hoped that now ''there can be a new commitment to justice and law and order from all political parties.''

But he said it was hard to expect that because in his three years in Nepal ''there has not been a single case where the perpetrators of a killing have been brought to justice.''

Authorities said some 10,000 police were deployed around the city on Tuesday. Authorities also banned protests near the convention center of King Gyanendra's palace.

Gyanendra has so far refused to heed calls that he leave his palace before Nepal is declared a republic, prompting senior officials to threaten that he could be removed by force.

''If he refuses to leave the palace we will use the law to force him out of there,'' Bhattarai said.

If he goes peacefully, the king is expected to move to the palatial private Kathmandu home where he lived before assuming the throne in 2001 following a massacre at the royal palace in which a gunman, allegedly the crown prince, gunned down late King Birendra and much of the royal family and then killed himself.

Gyanendra, the dead king's older brother, then took the throne. But he never won over Nepalis and became deeply unpopular after dismissing a civilian government in 2005 and seizing power for himself, saying he needed complete authority to crush the Maoist rebellion.

A year later, with the insurgency intensifying and the economy faltering, Gyanendra was forced to restore democracy after weeks of protests.

He has since lost command of the army and all his other powers. His portrait has disappeared from shop walls and the currency. ''Royal'' has been removed from the name of the army and national airline, and references to the king are gone from the national anthem.

Ahead of Tuesday's swearing in, the Maoists and Nepal's two other major political parties - the Nepali Congress and Communist Party of Nepal (United Marxist-Leninist) - agreed to replace the king with a president, officials from all three parties said. But the prime minister is expected to retain executive powers, and it wasn't clear what authority the president would have.