Nepal's foreign minister Narayan Khadka in China for bilateral talks

 Nepal's Minister for Foreign Affairs Narayan Khadka reached China's Qingdao city on a two day bilateral visit on Wednesday, the foreign ministry has said, the first high-level official visit from here to the neighbouring country since the formation of the Sher Bahadur Deuba government in July last year.

Khadka, who arrived in the port city of Qingdao with a Nepalese delegation in a special flight operated by the Himalaya Airlines, a China-Nepal joint venture company, is visiting China at the invitation of Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi.

Khadka will hold bilateral talks with Wang in Qingdao and will return to Kathmandu on Thursday.

According to a report in The Kathmandu Times newspaper, there has not been any high-level official visit from Nepal to China since the formation of the government led by Prime Minister Deuba in July last year.

However, there have been two back-to-back high-profile visits from China in March and July -- by foreign minister Wang and Liu Jianchao, head of the international department of the Chinese Communist Party.