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Nepal and China have agreed to carry out a joint inspection of the Nepal-China boundary through mutual consultation.

Two sides reached such an understanding in the meeting between Nepalese Foreign Minister Narayan Khadka and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on March 26. 

“Underlining the importance of continuously maintaining the Nepal-China border peaceful and tranquil in the spirit of the Boundary treaty, the two Foreign Ministers agreed to carry out joint inspection of Nepal-China boundary through mutual consultation,” the statement issued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Nepal says.

Earlier, a team dispatched by Nepal’s Ministry of Home Affairs came up with a report that there are border borders between two countries mainly in the Humla section.

About 300 people were killed by the Russian airstrike last week that blasted open a Mariupol theater that was being used as a shelter, Ukrainian authorities said, marking what could be the war’s deadliest known attack on civilians yet, Associated Press reported.

The death toll announced Friday fueled allegations that Moscow is committing war crimes by killing civilians, whether deliberately or by indiscriminate fire.

Russia, meanwhile, seemed to signal an important shift in its war objectives. US officials said Russian forces appear to have halted, at least for now, their ground offensive aimed at capturing the capital, Kyiv, and are concentrating more on gaining control of the Donbas region in the country’s southeast — a shift the Kremlin seemed to confirm.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy again appealed to Russia to negotiate an end to the war, but pointedly said he would not give up any Ukrainian territory for the sake of peace, according to the Associated Press.

“The territorial integrity of Ukraine should be guaranteed,” he said in a nightly video address to the nation. “That is, the conditions must be fair, for the Ukrainian people will not accept them otherwise.”

For days, the Mariupol government was unable to give a casualty count for the March 16 bombardment of the grand, columned Mariupol Drama Theater, where hundreds of people were said to be taking cover. In an attempt to ward off such an attack, the word “CHILDREN” was printed in Russian in huge white letters on the ground outside.

The city government cited eyewitnesses when it announced the death toll on its Telegram channel. But it was not immediately clear how witnesses arrived at the figure or whether emergency workers had finished excavating the ruins.

US President Joe Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the theater bombing was an “absolute shock, particularly given the fact that it was so clearly a civilian target.” He said it showed “a brazen disregard for the lives of innocent people” in the besieged port city, Associated Press reported.

The Ukrainian Parliament’s human rights commissioner said soon after the attack that more than 1,300 people had taken shelter in the theater, many of them because their homes were destroyed. The building had a basement bomb shelter, and some survivors did emerge from the rubble after the attack.

“This is a barbaric war, and according to international conventions, deliberate attacks on civilians are war crimes,” said Mircea Geoana, NATO’s deputy-secretary general.

He said Putin’s efforts to break Ukraine’s will to resist are having the opposite effect: “What he’s getting in response is an even more determined Ukrainian army and an ever more united West in supporting Ukraine.”

Ukrainian officials continued to push for more military support. Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, on Friday called for a lend-lease program, referring to US policy of heavily supplying its World War II allies.

Ukraine needs real-time military intelligence and heavy weapons, Yermak said in an address.

While the Russians continue to pound the capital from the air, they appear to have gone into a “defensive crouch” outside Kyiv and are focused more on the Donbas, a senior US defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the Pentagon’s assessment, according to the Associated Press.

“They don’t show any signs of being willing to move on Kyiv from the ground,” the official said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has proposed ‘China-India Plus cooperation in South Asia to forge a cooperation-based model with healthy interaction, so as to achieve mutually beneficial and win-win cooperation at a higher level and in a wider range’. 

He made such proposal in the meeting with Indian National Security Adviser Ajit Doval. According to China’s official media, the top Chinese diplomat stressed that the two countries should take part in the multilateral process with a cooperative posture. Since 2017, China is proposing two-plus one cooperation in South Asian countries including in Nepal. China is proposing to initiate the implementation of such proposal from Nepal.  India, however, has not accepted it. 

He said that when China and India speak with one voice, the whole world will listen, and if the two countries join hands, the whole world will pay attention.

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’.