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Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba will virtually address the 5th Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) Summit to be held on March 30.

The Nepali delegation led by the Prime Minister will include Minister for Foreign Affairs Narayan Khadka, Personal Secretary to the Prime Minister Bhan Bahadur Deuba, Chief Secretary Shanker Das Bairagi, Foreign Secretary Bharat Raj Paudyal and senior officials from the Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers and Ministry of Foreign Affairs, read a statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Narayan Khadka will participate in the 18th BIMSTEC ministerial meeting in-person to be held in Colombo, Sri Lanka on March 29. On the sidelines, he will also hold bilateral meetings with his counterparts from BIMSTEC member states. 

He will leave for Colombo March 28 and will return to Kathmandu on March 31, the Ministry said.

Similarly, the Nepali delegation led Ghanshyam Bhandari, Joint Secretary and Head of Regional Organization Division at the Ministry, will participate in the 22nd BIMSTEC senior officials' meeting physically on March 28.

The Fifth BIMSTEC Summit and its preceding meetings are being held in and from Colombo, Sri Lanka, from 28 – 30 in a hybrid mode, the statement read.

The theme of this year's Summit is ‘BIMSTEC – Towards a Resilient Region, Prosperous Economies, Healthy Peoples’.

Nepal reported 18 new Covid-19 cases on Friday.

According to the Ministry of Health and Population, 2, 822 swab samples were tested in the RT-PCR method, of which 12 returned positive. Likewise, 1, 520 people underwent antigen tests, of which six were tested positive.

The Ministry said that no one died of virus in the last 24 hours. The Ministry said that 271 infected people recovered from the disease.

As of today, there are 1, 960 active cases in the country.

Chinese State Councilor and Minister for Foreign Affairs Wang Yi arrived in Kathmandu on a three-day official visit to Nepal on Friday.

Leading a 25-member delegation, he landed at the Tribhuvan International Airport in Kathmandu at around 5 pm today.

Foreign Secretary Bharat Raj Paudyal welcomed him at the airport.

During his visit to Nepal, Minister Wang is scheduled to pay courtesy calls on President Bidya Devi Bhandari and Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.

Wang, who arrived in Nepal at the invitation of his Nepali counterpart Narayan Khadka, will also hold separate meetings with former Prime Minister and CPN-UML Chairman KP Sharma Oli and former Prime Minister and CPN (Maoist Centre) Chairman Pushpa Kamal Dahal.

He is also scheduled to hold bilateral talks with his Nepali counterpart Khadka, leading their respective delegations on March 26.

Photos: Ministry of Foreign Affairs

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi will meet his Indian counterpart in New Delhi on Friday, India’s foreign ministry said, after he arrived in the capital on the first visit by a top Chinese official since border clashes in 2020, Reuters reported.

Wang will meet Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar at 11 a.m. (0530 GMT), a ministry spokesperson told Reuters, without giving details. Media said he had already met India’s powerful national security adviser, Ajit Doval.

The top Chinese diplomat visited Pakistan and Afghanistan this week and is set to fly to Nepal later in the day on a whirlwind tour of South Asia where China is trying to deepen its influence.

Relations between old rivals India and China took a serious turn for the worse with a June 2020 clash in the Ladakh region on their Himalayan border in which at least 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers were killed, according to Reuters.

Jaishankar noted in a speech on Thursday the deterioration in ties and stressed the importance of the coordination of foreign and defence policies, which he said were “joined at the hip”.

“Few would have anticipated … the turn that India’s relations with China have taken in the last two years,” he said.

“Any prudent policy therefore backs its posture with capabilities and deterrence. A big responsibility of Indian diplomacy, therefore, is to create the widest set of options for such contingencies.”

Neither China nor India announced Wang’s visit before he landed in New Delhi late on Thursday, Reuters reported.

Footage from Reuters partner ANI indicated he arrived through the commercial airport rather than a defence facility nearby where most foreign dignitaries land.

Wang drew a rebuke from the Indian government ahead of his trip for remarks in Pakistan this week on the disputed Kashmir region. India and Pakistan rule Muslim-majority Kashmir in part but claim in full, and China has generally backed close ally Pakistan.

The two sides are expected to discuss their border tension as well as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Both consider Russia a friend and both have rejected Western calls for condemnation of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Russia calls it action a “special military operation”.

Thousands of Indian and Chinese troops are deployed on their high-altitude border. Senior military officers have held more than a dozen rounds of talks to defuse the standoff but progress has been limited, according to Reuters.

A man killed his wife by attacking her with a sharp weapon in Chunikhel, Budhanilkantha Municipality-13 on Thursday.

SP Dinesh Raj Mainali of the Metropolitan Police Range, Kathmandu, said that Bhakta Bahadur Thapa (21) of Udayapur and currently residing in Chunikhel killed his wife Laxmi Tamang (24) by attacking her with the sharp weapon over a domestic dispute last night.

Critically injured in the incident, Tamang was rushed to a hospital but doctors pronounced her dead on arrival.

Police said that they have arrested Thapa and kept at the Metropolitan Police Circle, Budhanilkantha for investigation.

North Korea says it test-fired its biggest intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on the orders of leader Kim Jong Un to boost its defences and prepare for a “long confrontation” with the United States, state media reported on Friday, Aljazeera reported.

Kim, dressed in a black leather jacket and sunglasses, oversaw the Thursday launch of what was described as a “new-type” of ICBM, the Hwasong-17.

The first full ICBM test by nuclear-armed North Korea since 2017 drew swift condemnation from South Korea and Japan, as well as the US. United Nations chief Antonio Guterres condemned the launch as a “clear violation” of Security Council resolutions.

According to state media, the weapon was launched from Pyongyang International Airport, travelled up to a maximum altitude of 6,248 km (3,880 miles) and flew a distance of 1,090 km (680 miles) during a 67-minute flight before falling into the Sea of Japan.

Kim ordered the test because of the “daily-escalating military tension in and around the Korean peninsula” and the “inevitability of the long-standing confrontation with the US imperialists accompanied by the danger of a nuclear war,” the official news agency for North Korea, KCNA, reported, according to Aljazeera.

“The emergence of the new strategic weapon of the DPRK would make the whole world clearly aware of the power of our strategic armed forces once again,” Kim said.

“Any forces should be made to be well aware of the fact that they will have to pay a very dear price before daring to attempt to infringe upon the security of our country,” he added, according to KCNA.

North Korea has carried out nearly a dozen missile tests since the start of the year that analysts say are aimed at forcing the US to accept North Korea as a nuclear power and remove the international sanctions that had crippled the economy even before Pyongyang sealed its borders because of the coronavirus pandemic, Aljazeera reported.

“South Korea has already launched missiles in response, and the US and South Korea are expected to respond to North Korea’s provocations through military exercises,” Kim Jong-ha, a security analyst at Hannam University in South Korea, told Al Jazeera. “As a result, inter-Korea and US-North Korea relations will be strained for the time being.”

The Tanahun District Court sent actor Paul Shah to judicial custody on a rape charge on Thursday.

A single bench of Tanahun District Court Judge Harish Chandra Dhungana issued the order to send Shah to judicial custody for further investigation.

Based on the complaint filed by a minor singer, the District Attorney’s Office had filed a case against Shah at Tanahun District Court on Tuesday seeking 14 years of imprisonment.

Twelve lawyers argued on behalf of Shah while seven on behalf of the victim.

The 32-year-old actor turned himself in at the District Police Office in Tanahun on February 27 after singer Samikshya Adhikari (17) had filed a rape against Shah accusing him of raping her.

She had also filed another case at the District Police Office in East Nawalparasi against him.

Center for Social Inclusion and Federalism organized a seminar on BRI and Nepal-China Relations at Everest Hotel in Baneshwar, Kathmandu on Thursday.

Around 80 participants including diplomats, bureaucrats, journalists and reporters, and scholars of various fields took part in the event.

The seminar comes at an opportune time of the impending visit of State Councilor and Minister for Foreign Affairs Wang Yi of the Peoples’ Republic of China.

Center for Social Inclusion and Federalism has been conducting numerous researches to understand Nepal-China cross-border relations, recent developments and its geopolitical implications.

In the course of the seminar, three major themes were discussed by three separate panels. 

The themes were BRI and Geopolitics: Risks and Opportunities, Nepal-China Cross-border Relations,

and Nepal-China Trade, Transit, and Transport, read a statement issued by the Centre for Social Inclusion and Federalism.

Ajaya Bhadra Khanal, Arpan Gelal, and Shraddha Ghimire presented their research findings on the topics respectively.

The first panel emphasized the impacts of ensuing great power rivalry on Nepal and viewed

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi’s visit from the same lens. Furthermore, the panel discussed

the contrasting models of diplomacy being practiced by Washington and Beijing and their averments towards one another regarding MCC and BRI, the statement read.

In the context of BRI, the panelist opined that the component of loan makes the BRI a complicated issue. Thus, the said issue may possibly reflect anxiety and caution in Nepal's negotiations with the Chinese side resulting in the delay in the implementation of the BRI project.

The panel particularly emphasized on the issue of Tibet as Nepal shares a border with Tibet, which is yet another contentious issue for China in its engagement with Nepal.

The second-panel discussion revolved around the topic of Nepal-China cross border relations. Panelists highlighted that there has been a lack of discussion on Nepal-China border issues, while most of the focus has been on the issues along the southern border.

The third session of the seminar dealt with the trade, transit and transportation relationship with

China. The presenter highlighted the TTA agreement between the two countries that was signed in

2016 which allowed Nepal for seaports and three land ports via China, the statement further read.

It has been more than five years since the agreement was signed but the pact has not been materialized yet.