Kathmandu, 29 September: Prime Minister Pushpakamal Dahal visited Delhi as his first foreign visit after assuming office.
Dahal had expected that he would be invited by Delhi immediately after he was elected PM, but Delhi didn’t invite him immediately. Meanwhile, another neighbor China, extended an invitation to attend the Boao Forum for Asia. Earlier, PM Dahal accepted the invitation, thinking that he would get an invitation from Delhi earlier to his China visit. When he failed to get an invitation to visit Delhi, Dahal cancelled his visit to China and also the visit to Qatar, where the Less Developed Countries’ Summit was held. Currently, Nepal is the chair of the LDCs group, and his presence in Doha was important. With the fear of India’s displeasure, PM Dahal wanted to avoid visiting other countries, deciding to put his first leg to Delhi in the course of visiting foreign nations.
The Indians performed a very low-grade welcome to Dahal. He didn’t receive the guard of honour, and he was also not sure about the agenda of the talks even before he met with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
In the non-scheduled meeting with the Indian national security advisor Ajit Doval and foreign secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra, Dahal was dictated which agendas to be discussed and which agendas not to be discussed during the next day’s bilateral meeting with Modi. Dahal became nervous from the dictation of the senior Indian officials, which, he shared later.
Dahal was unable to hold talks on serious agendas including border disputes with his counterpart.
No joint statement was issued during his India visit.
China, although, is not satisfied with the attitude of the government, didn’t miss to give honour to the Nepali prime minister. The honour was not for PM Dahal but for Nepal, this is the Chinese gesture.
Dahal met President Xi Jinping and also his Chinese counterpart Li Qiang, received a guard of honour and finally, a joint statement was issued after the bilateral talks in Beijing.
The joint statement issued by both China and Nepal states, “During the visit, Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal ‘Prachanda’ met with President Xi Jinping, held talks with Premier Li Qiang, and met with Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress Zhao Leji.”
It makes clear that there was no one-on-one meeting between Dahal and Xi, as reported by the government mouthpiece “The Rising Nepal”.
In such previous joint statements, a sentence of “respecting Nepal’s sovereignty and independence” used to be mentioned, however, this time such words are absent, according to Nepal’s foreign affairs watchers.
People’s News Monitoring Service
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