Rajnath meets Nepal PM, other leaders

Kathmandu, Sep 18 ( IANS) Visiting Indian Home Minister Rajnath Singh Thursday held talks with Nepal Prime Minister Sushil Koirala and his counterpart, Bam Dev Gautam, separately.

During the meeting with Prime Minister Koirala, Rajnath inquired about the latest political situation in Nepal, and the status of the constitution drafting process

Rajnath Singh arrived in Kathmandu Thursday afternoon to participate in the sixth meeting of the SAARC home and interior ministers be slated for Friday.

Known as the Nepal hand in India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), Rajnath Singh also inquired about how political parties were handling contentious issues of constitution-drafting and whether the constitution would be delivered within the stipulated time, Jan 22 next year.

The two also recalled the visit of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and both sides expressed great satisfaction over the outcome, Dinesh Bhattarai, foreign relations adviser to Koirala, told IANS.

In response, Koirala committed that the new constitution would be promulgated within the given timeline.

Both leaders expressed satisfaction over the conducive environment in bilateral relations and hoped that new synergy would be added to the relations in the future, Bhattarai said.

The meeting also focused on ways of strengthening the SAARC process, implementation of agreements reached during the visit of Modi in the first week of August during which issues of bilateral security concern also figured.

Similarly, Rajnath Singh also met his Nepali counterpart Gautam Thursday and discussed a wide range of bilateral and regional security issues. According to Nepal's home ministry, the talks were focused on curbing cross border crimes, circulation of fake currencies, formation of a common anti-terrorism mechanism to curb terrorism and strengthening the capability of Nepal Police for crime control.

The Indian home minister also met former prime ministers Sher Bahadur Deuba and other leaders from Nepali Congress, Communist Partyy of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist (CPN-UML) and other Maoist parties.

Upon his arrival in Kathmandu, Rajnath told the media that SAARC would be an appropriate platform for meeting the common challenges of the region.

"The member countries should cooperate with each other to address them," he said.

He stated that India, since ancient time, believed in the ideology of "vasudhaiva kutumbakam" and wanted to maintain very cordial relations with its neighbours, especially the SAARC member countries.

"We can't change our neighbours, we can only change our friends," Rajnath Singh said.

On India's ties with Nepal, the home minister said: "We have a very old historical, cultural and geographical relation with the country."

(Anil Giri can be contacted at girianil@gmail.com)