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A Nepalese government report leaked to the BBC accuses China of encroaching into Nepal along the two countries' shared border, BBC reported.

It is the first time there have been official claims from Nepal of Chinese interference in its territory.

The report was commissioned last September following claims that China has been trespassing in the district of Humla, in the far west of Nepal.

China's embassy in Kathmandu denies there has been any encroachment.

The Nepalese government has not yet responded to queries from the BBC. 

It is unclear why the report has not yet been published. But the Nepalese government has over recent years improved ties with China to counterbalance its long-standing relationship with India, its giant neighbour to the south.

The report's findings are likely to put pressure on these growing links with Beijing.

The border between Nepal and China runs for nearly 1,400km (870 miles) along the Himalayan mountains. It was laid out in a series of treaties signed between the two countries in the early 1960s.

Much of it is in remote, hard-to-reach areas. On the ground, the boundary is demarcated by a chain of pillars, set kilometres apart.

This sometimes makes it hard to know exactly where the border is located.

The Nepalese government decided to send a taskforce to Humla after reports about possible Chinese encroachment. Some claimed China had built a series of buildings on the Nepalese side of the border.

The team consisted of representatives from the police and the government.

In its report, passed to the BBC, the group found that surveillance activities by Chinese security forces had restricted religious activities on the Nepalese side of the border in a place called Lalungjong.

The area has traditionally been a draw for pilgrims because of its proximity to Mount Kailash, just over the border in China, which is a sacred site for both Hindus and Buddhists.

The report also concluded that China had been limiting grazing by Nepalese farmers.

In the same area, it found China was building a fence around a border pillar, and attempting to construct a canal and a road on the Nepalese side of the border.

But the taskforce did find that Chinese buildings originally thought to have been constructed inside Nepal had, in fact, been built on the Chinese side of the border.

The investigators found local Nepalese people were often reluctant to talk about border issues because some of them depended on continued access to Chinese markets across the border.

The report recommended Nepalese security forces be stationed in the area to guarantee security.

It also suggested Nepal and China should reactivate a dormant mechanism set up to resolve these kinds of border issues.

Budhhi Narayan Shrestha, a prominent cartographer and former head of Nepal's survey department, said people living near the border should be clearly told exactly where it is so they can better protect Nepalese territory.

As China denies any encroachment, it is not clear what its motives might be for asserting control over its border with Nepal, but security could be one reason.

Historically, there was some unofficial cross-border traffic, including pilgrims and traders, but China has gradually restricted this movement.

Vijay Kant Karna, a former Nepalese diplomat who now works at a think-tank in Kathmandu, said Beijing could be worried about India, its regional rival with whom it has its own border issues.

"It looks like they are concerned about infiltration from outside forces, so they want to disconnect relations across the border," he said.

China might also be worried about movement in the opposite direction.

The region on the Chinese side of the border is Tibet, from where many people have fled to escape what they see as Beijing's repression.

About 20,000 Tibetan refugees live in Nepal; others have passed through on their way to India and elsewhere.

Over recent years, China has tried to cut off this escape route.

There have been reports of Chinese encroachment into Nepal over the last two years, leading to occasional protests in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu. The latest demonstration was just last month.

In response, the Chinese embassy in Nepal issued a statement in January saying: "There is no dispute at all. It is hoped that the Nepali people [will] not be misled with false individual reports." 

The embassy has not, however, responded to the BBC about the specific allegations laid out in the unpublished report.

It is thought the Nepalese government has taken up the border issue with Beijing - but it is not saying what China has said in reply.

US President Joe Biden said on Monday that the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline would be halted if Russia invades Ukraine and stressed unity with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz as the West rallies to avert a war in Europe, Reuters reported.

At a White House press conference with the new German leader, Biden, a longtime opponent of the decade-old pipeline projectto Germany from Russia, said Russian forces crossing into Ukraine would trigger a shutdown.

"If Russia invades, that means tanks or troops crossing the ... border of Ukraine again, then there will be ... no longer a Nord Stream 2. We, we will bring an end to it," Biden said. Asked how, given the project is in German control, Biden said: "I promise you, we'll be able to do it."

Scholz said the United States and Germany had the same approach to Ukraine, to Russia and to sanctions, but did not directly confirm the Nord Stream 2 plans or mention the pipeline publicly by name over the course of his day-long visit.

Whether the United States and Germany are on the same page over the $11 billion project has become a crucial question as the two major democracies lead NATO allies in pushback against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia has amassed some 100,000 troops near the Ukraine border. It denies it is planning an invasion. US officials say an attack could occur within days or weeks.

Scholz, under fire at home and abroad for what has been seen as insufficient leadership in the crisis, told reporters Russia would pay a very high price if it invaded Ukraine and said Germany and the United States had the same approach.

"We will be united. We will act together. And we will take all the necessary steps," Scholz said in English.

Even before the pipeline starts flowing, Germany uses Russian gas to cover half its needs. It delayed approval of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline until at least the second half of 2022, but has refused to cancel the nearly completed project.

Biden and Scholz emphasized that they preferred diplomacy as a solution to the Ukraine conflict.

Asked if Russia still had an "off ramp" from any crisis, Biden said yes.

Scholz, whose popularity has plunged 17 percentage points in recent weeks as tensions ratcheted up with Moscow, is due to visit both Ukraine and Russia next week, after meetings this week with Biden, European Union officials and the heads of Baltic states.

The Biden-Scholz relationship could be pivotal at a time when French President Emmanuel Macron has yet to declare if he will run in an election in three months, and while British Prime Minister Boris Johnson is engulfed in a domestic crisis.

On Monday, Macron met with Putin and told the Russian leader he seeks to avoid war and build trust.

Scholz also met with key lawmakers on both sides of the aisle on Monday evening, including top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer and Republican Senate leader Mitch McConnell.

Biden said he had no doubts about Germany's reliability as a partner and said Scholz had the United States' complete trust. "There is no doubt about Germany's partnership with the United States. None," Biden said.

Biden and US officials emphasized that Germany was the second largest donor of non-military assistance to Kyiv after the United States, and that they were planning sanctions against Russia together.

Details of the sanctions package are still being finalized, but banning Russia from the SWIFT financial transaction system remains an option, a US official said.

Steven Sokol, president of the American Council on Germany, said Scholz needed to clarify Germany's position on Nord Stream 2 and show more "creativity" in providing assistance to Ukraine, short of sending in weapons.

"Germany has to understand that if it wants to be more of a player on the world stage and carry more responsibility, then with that comes taking more action," Sokol said. "In order to be a leader, Germany has to do more."

French President Emmanuel Macron is set to hold talks in Moscow Monday in a bid to to help de-escalate the tense situation around Ukraine, Associated Press reported.

The concentration of an estimated 100,000 Russian troops near Ukraine has fueled Western worries that it heralds a possible offensive, with White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan warning Sunday that Russia could invade Ukraine “any day,” triggering a conflict that would come at an “enormous human cost.”

Russia has denied any plans to attack its neighbor, but is urging the U.S. and its allies to bar Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations from joining NATO, halt weapons deployments there and roll back NATO forces from Eastern Europe. Washington and NATO have rejected the demands.

Macron, who is set to meet in the Kremlin with Russian President Vladimir Putin before visiting Ukraine Tuesday, said last week that his priority is “dialogue with Russia and de-escalation.”

Before heading to Moscow, Macron had a call Sunday with U.S. President Joe Biden. They discussed “ongoing diplomatic and deterrence efforts in response to Russia’s continued military build-up on Ukraine’s borders, and affirmed their support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the White House said in a statement.

The French presidency said Macron sought to ensure “good coordination” with Biden in the call.

In an interview with French newspaper Journal du Dimanche published on Sunday, Macron said that “we won’t get unilateral gestures but it is indispensable to prevent a degradation of the situation before building confidence gestures and mechanisms.”

“The geopolitical objective of Russia today is clearly not Ukraine, but to clarify the rules of cohabitation with NATO and the EU,” Macron said. “The security and sovereignty of Ukraine or any other European state cannot be a subject for compromise, while it is also legitimate for Russia to pose the question of its own security.”

Continuing the high-level diplomacy, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is set to meet with Biden Monday for talks expected to focus on the Ukrainian standoff. Scholz is set to travel to Kyiv and Moscow on Feb. 14-15.

Scholz has said that Moscow would pay a “high price” in the event of an attack, but his government has faced criticism over its refusal to supply lethal weapons to Ukraine, bolster its troop presence in eastern Europe or spell out which sanctions it would support against Russia if it invades.

On Sunday, German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht raised the possibility that the country could send more troops to Lithuania to reinforce its presence on NATO’s eastern flank.

Biden has ordered additional U.S. troops deployed to Poland, Romania and Germany, and a few dozen elite U.S troops and equipment were seen landing Sunday in southeastern Poland near the border with Ukraine with hundreds more infantry troops of the 82nd Airborne Division set to arrive.

In 2015, France and Germany helped broker a peace deal for eastern Ukraine in a bid to end the hostilities between Ukrainian forces and Russia-backed separatists that erupted the previous year following the Russian annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula.

The agreement signed in the Belarusian capital, Minsk, helped stop large-scale fighting, but efforts at a political settlement have stalled and frequent skirmishes have continued along the tense line of contact in Ukraine’s eastern industrial heartland called Donbas.

The leaders of Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany last met in Paris in December 2019 in the so-called Normandy format summit, but they failed to resolve main conflicting issues.

Amid the tensions over the Russian military buildup, presidential advisers from the four countries held talks in Paris on Jan. 26, but they didn’t make any visible progress and agreed to meet again in Berlin in two weeks.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has pushed for another four-way Normandy summit, but the Kremlin said a meeting of leaders would only make sense if the parties agree on the next steps to give a special status to the rebel east.

Putin and his officials have urged France, Germany and other Western allies to encourage Ukraine to fulfill its obligations under the 2015 agreement, which envisaged a broad autonomy for the rebel east and a sweeping amnesty for the separatists. The agreement stipulated that only after those conditions are met would Ukraine be able to restore control of its border with Russia in rebel regions.

The Minsk deal was seen as a betrayal of national interests by many in Ukraine and its implementation has stalled. Amid the latest tensions, Ukrainian authorities have strongly warned the West against pressuring Ukraine to implement the agreement.

Last week, Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defense Council, told The Associated Press that an attempt by Ukraine to fulfil the Minsk deal could trigger internal unrest that would play into Moscow’s hand.

Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba noted that Moscow wants the rebel regions reintegrated into Ukraine in order to use them to effectively block the country’s pro-Western aspirations, vowing that “this is not going to happen.”

The government has decided to hold the local level elections on May 13.

A Cabinet meeting held in Baluwatar on Monday made the decision to this effect.

According to a minister, the government has decided to hold the local polls in a single phase.

Earlier, the Election Commission had recommended the government to hold the local level elections on May 18.

Nepal held its local elections in 20 years in 2017 in three phases—on May 14, June 28 and September 18.