According to a highly-placed source, Chinese ambassador to Nepal Yang Houlan called on Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai on Thursday morning and informed him that Primier Wen was coming to Nepal on Saturday and requested him to make necessary preparations for the visit. [break]
Ambassador Yang also requested that the visit be kept secret until primier Wen arrived in Nepal.
Upon Chinese request, the much-talked-about visit was not announced by the Nepal government till 11 this morning.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs made a formal announcement of the one-day official visit just 48 minutes before Wen´s special plane landed at the TIA. Wen arrived at 11:50 a.m. as his flight was delayed by almost an hour.
The Chinese foreign ministry also announced the visit in Beijing at around the same time as Nepal did.
"I apologize for the inconvenience," Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Foreign Affairs Narayankazi Shrestha told journalists at the very outset of a press conference organized to make public a joint statement issued at the end of Wen´s five-hour visit.
He further added, "A high-level visit like this is fixed through bilateral understanding. It appeared to happen all of a sudden because the date was not finalized though the visit was already confirmed."
When asked whether the visit was kept secret at the request of the Chinese side, Shrestha repeated the same statement and asked the journalists to understand the situation accordingly.
Related story
Int'l media informed about Visit Nepal Year
