Making a reconciliatory gesture after his hostile conduct in 2015-2016, Nepal’s Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli said on Saturday that he has come to India with a mission to create a ‘model relationship’.
He also made it clear that the differences of the past are no more hindrance between the two sides and the ‘misunderstandings’ have been removed. He assured the Indian leadership that Nepal attaches great importance to its relations with India.
“Being close neighbours, our destiny is
intertwined. Prosperity is our common goal. Relations between neighbours are different from those of others. Neighbourhood realities make peaceful coexistence, based on the principles of equality, justice, mutual respect and benefits a necessity for shared destiny,” Oli said in a media statement after bilateral talks with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“We must seize the opportunity to make our relations fruitful to the lives of our peoples. As close neighbours, we share a common destiny, which demands collective pursuit of prosperity,” he added.
With Modi, Oli said, there was a convergence of views on several issues when they held constructive deliberation on a number of specific agendas. “We exchanged views on how we can advance our cooperative relations and can make it deeper and more comprehensive,” Oli said.
Oli said the two leaders have agreed on the need of continuation of engagements at the highest level. “I renewed the invitation to Prime Minister Modi ji to pay a visit to Nepal at the earliest convenient time. I am hopeful that the visit would take place soon,” the Nepalese PM said.
On the flooding in India and Nepal during monsoons that often saw two sides blaming each other, Oli said: “Talking about water resources and its management, inundation has become a repeated problem during every monsoon in Nepal’s lowland. We stressed on the need of finding appropriate solution to this problem.”
He appreciated India’s decision to have guidelines and regulation for cross border trade of electricity to improve transparency. “Nepal will have power surplus in wet season and deficit in dry season for a few years to come whereas India needs more power in summer. In view of this complementarity of energy needs, we discussed about realization of energy banking. We also discussed about development of new transmission lines,” Oli said.
Oli mentioned progress of boundary related technical works, which are being undertaken by the Surveys of both sides. He said there is an understanding that status quo will be maintained until the two sides start to address the problem of cross border occupation in totality.