The Hindu : National : India looking forward to Prachanda visit

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India looking forward to Prachanda visit

Special Correspondent

New Delhi: India will respond positively to any proposal for revising the 1950 Indo-Nepal Treaty that Nepalese Prime Minister Prachanda may make during his first official visit to the country on September 14.

The Manmohan Singh government, official sources said, was looking forward to Mr. Prachanda’s four-day visit and saw it as an opportunity for New Delhi to establish a political equation with the new Maoist-led dispensation in the Himalayan republic.

Though Mr. Prachanda, who heads a potentially fractious coalition government, has been getting contradictory advice from his political allies on what his agenda ought to be during his visit to India, officials here fully expect him to raise substantive issues such as the fate of the 1950 treaty. India, the sources said, had no objection to revising the treaty to make it up to date and in tune with contemporary realities. Though the Indian side’s preference is to go in for a brand new treaty — as has been done with Bhutan recently — rather than tinker with or cherry-pick individual elements from the existing treaty, New Delhi believes these issues can be sorted out through any review mechanism Prime Minister Prachanda may propose.

The sources said India’s agenda vis-À-vis Nepal did not depend on which party or government was in power there.

Broadly speaking, New Delhi’s traditional concerns revolved around questions of security and border management — including the potential misuse of Nepali territory by elements inimical to Indian interests — as well as the imperative of promoting economic cooperation, especially in the hydroelectric sector.

Though the new dispensation in Kathmandu seems receptive to ‘win-win’ cooperation with India in this sector, the sources recalled the period of the mid-1990s when a government led by the Unified Marxists-Leninists started out with good intentions but ultimately got caught up in the anti-Indian rhetoric of domestic politics. “Right now too, we get the sense that their internal balance is not yet settled. There is no question Prachanda is a great man, otherwise he would not have got where he has,” the source said. “But how this translates into action remains to be seen ... I think it will take more than one visit to get a measure.”

The sources said joint action for flood control would also figure high on the agenda of Mr. Prachanda’s visit. “We have a common interest in working together. Both of us have to do the right thing at the right time,” he said, in a reference to the maintenance of barrages and embankments along the Kosi.

India was also prepared to assist the Nepal government in the process of integrating the cadres of the Maoist People’s Liberation Army with the Nepal Army. “Last year itself, we had offered six vocational training centres, the idea being to give them [demobilised rebels] some other skills.”

India intends to raise with Mr. Prachanda the recent incidents of harassment and intimidation of Indian businesses in Nepal by the Maoist Young Communist League.

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