China rushes in where India fears to tread in Nepal

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KATHMANDU: A jumbo Chinese delegation headed by Chinese president Hu Jintao’s special envoy signed four pacts on Wednesday worth over $50 million with the caretaker government of Nepal while the turbulent republic’s southern neighbour India hesitated to make diplomatic forays, the Times of India reports. A 60-member Chinese delegation led by Zhou Yongkang, a senior member of the Standing Committee of the politburo of the Communist Party of China, that also includes three ministers and four assistant ministers, did not put their three-day trip to Nepal off despite the fall of the Jhala Nath Khanal government last week.

Instead, they arrived in Kathmandu on Tuesday as per schedule and went on with their meetings with top politicians, ministers and the head of state as if nothing untoward had happened.

The delegation met caretaker Prime Minister Khanal on Wednesday, signing a $50 million economic and technical cooperation, an agreement on providing a $24 million soft loan for a hydropower transmission line project, a $2.5 million security project meant to enhance the capacities of Nepal Police, and a preliminary agreement to provide other concessional loans.

According to a press statement issued by Khanal’s foreign affairs advisor Milan Tuladhar, the outgoing premier said the visit, “made at such a critical juncture of the transition period in Nepal: showed Beijing’s “sincere spirit of friendship” towards Nepal.

Expressing the hope that the two neighbouring countries would continue to have closer ties and economic cooperation in the days to come, Khanal extended an invitation to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao to visit Nepal at his earliest convenience.

By contrast, there has been no visit by any senior Indian official since a three-day official trip by Indian external affairs minister SM Krishna in April. Though Indian finance minister Pranab Mukherjee was to have paid a visit after that, it was put off at the last minute.

While Nepal had been trying to fix Khanal’s visit to India during the six months that he was in power, it could not be worked out. Neither has New Delhi been able to get Nepal to ink any of the pending bilateral pacts, like a revised extradition treaty.

India has always been wary of sending envoys during the tenure of a caretaker government or signing deals with it other than those of minor economic cooperation projects due to reservations about the succeeding government’s reaction to such pacts.

However, such is the dragon’s grip on Kathmandu that new governments have never questioned any deals made by their predecessors with Beijing, including the questionable military deals made by King Gyanendra during his army-backed regime in 2005-6 that cost the exchequer dearly. Also, all Nepal governments have maintained the same policy towards its northern neighbour China.