South Asian News Network

Kathmandu, June 7: Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal has held the first visit to India following the formation of present government. Foreign Minister Khanal, who reached New Delhi, at the friendly invitation of Indian Minister of External Affairs, Dr S Jaishankar, held talks with his counterpart on Saturday. Development cooperation, connectivity, trade and transit, energy, and strengthening people-to-people relations featured during the meeting. Entire gamut of Nepal-India relations in addition to regional and multilateral issues were discussed on the occasion, according to Foreign Ministry. Ministers duo Khanal and Jaishankar expressed happiness over the satisfactory progress on bilateral cooperation in various fields and welcomed the new initiative for cooperation on innovation and startup, and the digital and financial areas. Both sides agreed to reinforce multidimensional partnership between the two countries. They also hailed the internal process completed for enforcement of Mutual Legal Assistance Agreement (MLAA) between Nepal and India. The MLAA would provide an institutional legal basis for making effective the investigation, prosecution and judicial action on trans-border crimes. Following the bilateral talks, Indian Minister of External Affairs, Dr Jaishankar, handed over the list of projects- 72 related to health sector and 12 to cultural heritages- completed as part of reconstruction drive funded by Indian government following the 2015 Earthquake in Nepal. Both Ministers jointly inaugurated the unified payment interface (UPI) and the national payment interface (NPI) launched for easing cross-border digital payment between Nepal and India. Peer-to-peer connection was also the part of these schemes. Even an agreement was signed between the Kathmandu University and ‘Digital India Bhasini’ for co-creating a national digital infrastructure for ‘voice first’ language translation platform. The Foreign Minister also held separate meetings with national security advisor of India, Ajit Doval; chief of International Department of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Dr Bijay Chauthaiwale. The meetings cetred on expansion of bilateral cooperation based on aspiration of people from both countries. —-