Following the completion of the preparations for the 37th session of SAARC Council of Ministers, foreign ministers from SAARC member countries -- Nepal, India, Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Bhutan and Bangladesh -- have started to arrive in the touristic city to attend the event.
The mini-SAARC summit will be held in Pokhara Grand Hotel, a five-star hotel, for four days. The first two days -- Monday and Tuesday -- of the summit will see joint-secretary level meetings while on the third day, there will be a secretary-level meeting. The foreign minister-level meeting will be inaugurated by Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli on Thursday, the foreign ministry spokesperson Tara Prasad Pokharel informed.
Foreign ministers Kamal Thapa of Nepal, Sushma Swaraj of India, Dunya Maumoon of the Maldives, Mangala Pinsiri Samaraweera of Sri Lanka, Abadul Ahsan Mohammad Ali of Bangladesh, Damcho Dorji of Bhutan, Deputy Foreign Minister of Afghanistan Hekmat Khalil Karzai and foreign affairs adviser Sartaj Aziz at Pakistan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs will attend the mini-SAARC summit.
The SAARC-level meeting will review the agenda of the last SAARC Summit held in Kathmandu, that had concluded with '36-point Kathmandu declaration'. The 36-point Kathmandu Declaration 2014 had emphasized on SAFTA and trade facilitation, connectivity, combating terrorism and trans-national crimes as well as strengthening the SAARC processes.
The meeting will also review the progress of Kathmandu declaration, according to Foreign Ministry's spokesman Pokharel.
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