CPN (Unified Socialist) urges PM Dahal to draw attention of India on host of topics

KATHMANDU, May 31: CPN (Unified Socialist) has urged Prime Minister Pushpa Kamal Dahal to strongly take up the issue of reviewing the 1950 Nepal-India Treaty of Peace and Friendship during his visit to India. The party has called the treaty unequal.

The party has urged the settlement of the disputes surrounding Kalapani, Lipulekh and Limpiyadhura through a diplomatic channel, said Dr Shankar Khatiwada, secretary of the party's foreign department.

Initiatives were taken through the diplomatic level by reaching a bilateral memorandum of understanding during the visit of the then Prime Minister of Nepal Manamohan Adhikari to India, said Khatiwada.

According to the party, other agendas during the visit should be to urge the Indian side to immediately accept the report of the Eminent Persons' Group, the timely amendment of the trade treaty between Nepal and India, the reduction of trade deficit, request India to provide direct air entry routes for international flights to the Pokhara International Airport and the Gautam Buddha International Airport in Bhairahawa, the increment of Indian investment in the industrialisation and marketing of Nepal's energy, tourism, physical infrastructure and agriculture, and the initiatives to control smuggling and illegal economic activities across the border between Nepal and India.

Similarly, the party suggested the prime minister to take initiatives towards developing the required system for systematizing the archive of the Nepali and Indian nationals' movement across the open border between the two countries, to request for cooperation for the prevention and control of livestock diseases, to check the unnecessary hassle, cheating and extortion of Nepali workers at the border areas as well as the misbehavior of the Indian security personnel deployed for border security towards the Nepali workers returning to their homes from India.

The party also urged the PM to stress on the prompt operation of the Pancheshwar Project to the benefit of both sides, to request for the support of India for the construction of the East-West Railway and Kathmandu-Raxaul Railway of Nepal, to ensure the sale and supply of hydroelectricity produced in Nepal in the Indian market without discrimination, to request India to allow using the Indian transmission line for exporting electricity from Nepal to Bangladesh and to take initiatives for forging trilateral common understanding among Nepal, India and Bangladesh for energy development and distribution.

Likewise, the party has urged Prime Minister Dahal to draw the attention of India on the need for removing the confusion over organizing the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) Summit and emphasizing on expanding mutual cooperation by increasing the effectiveness of SAARC and other regional organizations.

It called on the PM to request India to provide exchange facility of the Indian currency notes of Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 denominations which are in reserve with the Nepal Rastra Bank for long, to harmonize the difference in the telephone tariff between Nepal and India and to reduce the telephone tariff as well as to emphasize on strengthening the cultural ties between the two countries and further expand religious and cultural tourism.

The Unified Socialist also urged the prime minister to take initiative with India for linking various religious tourist areas of Nepal with those of India and to draw the southern neighbor's serious attention to the impact of inundation caused in the Terai region of Nepal by the dams unilaterally constructed by the Indian side at the border areas.

(RSS)