Foreign Secretary Kwatra visiting Kathmandu to reboot India-Nepal ties

In a bid to further deepen multifaceted ties with Nepal, India’s Foreign Secretary Vinay Mohan Kwatra will visit Kathmandu early next week.

Nepal and India jointly announced Kwatra’s visit on Friday afternoon.

Kwatra will be visiting Kathmandu on Feb 13 and 14 at the invitation of his counterpart Bharat Raj Paudyal. Paudyal, who visited New Delhi in mid-2022, had extended invitation to Kwatra for Nepal visit.

Announcing the visit, Nepal’s foreign ministry said that the foreign secretaries of Nepal and India will discuss various matters of bilateral cooperation such as connectivity, power trade, agriculture, health and culture, among others.

“The visit is in continuation of the regular exchange of visits between the two friendly neighbours. The visit will be an opportunity to further expand and deepen Nepal-India ties,” said the ministry.

In its statement, India’s external affairs ministry said that the visit is in keeping with the tradition of regular high-level exchanges between the two countries and the priority India attaches to its relations with Nepal under its ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy.

“During the visit, the two Foreign Secretaries will hold discussions on the entire range of multifaceted cooperation between India and Nepal.
India has historical and civilizational linkages with Nepal, and bilateral cooperation between the two countries has strengthened in the recent years, with several major infrastructure and cross-border connectivity projects completed with India’s assistance. The visit will be an opportunity to further advance our bilateral ties,” the MEA stated.

Kwatra will be the first Indian high-ranking official to visit Nepal after the formation of a new government under the leadership of Maoist Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda.

Kwatra’s visit is expected to lay a ground for Nepal’s Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal aka Prachanda to India, according to another official at the ministry. Earlier, PM Prachanda said that he will visit India soon without giving specific dates.

During the visit, Kwatra will hold high-level engagements including President Bidya Devi Bhandari, Prime Minister Prachanda and Foreign Minister Bimala Rai Paudyal. He is also likely to meet Sher Bahadur Deuba, president of the Nepali Congress.

He will hold bilateral talks with his counterpart in the Nepali capital.

This will be Kwatra’s first visit to Nepal after assuming office as India’s foreign secretary in April last year. Prior to that, he was serving as India’s ambassador to Nepal.

Kwatra’s visit will be coincide with  a visit to India by Nepal’s defence minister Nepal’s Defence Minister Hari Prasad Upreti.

Kwatra’s visit to Nepal also follows two high-level visits from India–by Nepal’s former Prime Minister Deuba to New Delhi in April and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Lumbini, the birthplace of Lord Buddha, in May last year.

The two friendly neighbors are making significant progress on various areas of bilateral cooperation including energy and railroad connectivity as per the consensus reached at the highest political level.

In August last year, Nepal Investment Board under the Nepali government signed a pact with India’s NHPC Limited to develop two hydroelectric projects—West Seti (750 megawatts) and Seti River-6 (450 megawatts) — in the far-western region of Nepal. The West Seti was earlier being developed by China.

The Indian foreign secretary’s visit to Kathmandu also has its geopolitical dimension. His visit comes on the heels of flurry of high-level visits from the United States amid growing China-US geostrategic rivalry in the Himalayan nation.

Nepal received two high level visits from the United States in the past two weeks. Victoria Nuland, US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs came here earlier last week and Samantha Power, the USAID administrator concluded her whirlwind visit this week.

Meanwhile, Afreen Akhter, deputy assistant secretary of state in the Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs (SCA) for Nepal, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Bhutan, and the Maldives, as well as the Office of Security and Transnational Affairs, is visiting Nepal from February 13.

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