PoliticsDiplomacy
Vikram Misri to visit Kathmandu on 4-5 November ahead of Balendra Shah's India trip
The Foreign Secretary will hold talks with his Nepali counterpart Amrit Bahadur Rai, in a visit first planned for May and put off over protocol issues.
Key points
- Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri will visit Nepal on 4 and 5 November.
- He will hold talks with Nepal's Foreign Secretary Amrit Bahadur Rai in Kathmandu.
- The visit sets the stage for Prime Minister Balendra Shah's India trip, expected later this month.
Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri will visit Nepal on 4 and 5 November, the Ministry of External Affairs announced on Monday evening, in a trip meant to prepare the ground for Nepali Prime Minister Balendra Shah’s visit to India.
In Kathmandu, Misri will hold talks with Nepal’s Foreign Secretary Amrit Bahadur Rai and call on senior Nepali leaders. The MEA said the two sides would discuss bilateral, regional and global matters of mutual interest. “India and Nepal share strong and friendly ties which have seen substantial progress across diverse areas of cooperation,” it said, adding that the visit “continues the tradition of regular high-level exchanges between the two countries”.
Nepal’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the two foreign secretaries would review the full range of Nepal-India relations. Misri is due back in New Delhi on Thursday.
The trip has been a long time coming. Misri was first due in Kathmandu in the second week of May to meet the new government led by Shah’s Rastriya Swatantra Party, but the visit was put off over protocol issues.
Officials in Kathmandu now expect Shah to visit New Delhi later this month, though no date has been fixed. Nepal wants that visit to bring a large aid package after the devastating floods of 26 August, progress on the border dispute, a revised trade treaty and more air entry points for international flights via India. Several joint projects are also expected to be inaugurated.
Late last month, Nepal’s Armed Police Force and India’s Sashastra Seema Bal held their 10th coordination meeting in Kathmandu and agreed to share information on cross-border crime and use CCTV, scanners and drones along the open frontier.