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- Gen Naravane is visiting Nepal at the official invitation of Nepal Army chief Gen Purna Chandra Thapa. Gen Naravane is visiting Nepal at the official invitation of Nepal Army chief Gen Purna Chandra Thapa.
- Indian Army chief Manoj Mukund Naravane was awarded the honorary rank of general of the Nepali Army.
- Indian Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla, will visit Nepal in late November, amid signs New Delhi is keen to turn the page on the acrimonious relations it has had with its northern neighbour over the past year.
- Shringla’s two-day trip will cap a series of high-profile visits by Indian officials in recent months and is seen by many as New Delhi’s attempt to mend fences with Kathmandu.
- Shringla’s visit is expected to pave the way for a ministerial-level meeting.
- Nepal’s Foreign Minister Pradeep Gyawali told the two sides will discuss a range of issues, including the border dispute.
- “We will discuss all issues on our bilateral relations. Because this is the first bilateral meeting [in] a year, we will not just focus on the border issue,” Gyawali said.
Why is this happening now?
- “A realization seems to have seeped into the power corridors of India that its relations with Nepal cannot be left unattended, even as it initially called the adoption of the new map by Nepal a ‘cartographic manipulation,” she added.
- “Nepal matters because of the broader security implications of the tension. India suffered a setback in Ladakh,” said Pramod Jaiswal, research director at the Nepal Institute for International Cooperation and Engagement in Kathmandu. “There’s a feeling within the Indian establishment that China is trying to encircle it in South Asia.”
- According to Shah, a former associate fellow at the Observer Research Foundation. “The present government [in Kathmandu] seems to be tilted in favor of its northern neighbor, with China now influencing Nepali domestic politics directly. It’s not a matter of whether Nepal can balance between the two, but it is a foreign policy compulsion for a landlocked country to maintain equidistance between its two most powerful giant neighbors,” she said.
Nepal has a border issue with China as well
- The months-old allegation of a Chinese incursion into Nepal’s northwestern Humla district refuses to fade away, despite both countries denying it. Nepal’s main opposition, the Nepali Congress party, continues to demand an investigation into the matter.
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