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VOL. 27, NO. 33, May 02, 2008 (Baishakh 20 2065 B.S.)
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Beyond The Boundary
Nepal’s national politics draws unparallel international attention
By Sushil Sharma
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Sood: Hectic in meeting |
Diplomacy not politics will dictate Nepal’s tumultuous journey ahead, wrote a prominent columnist.
Indeed, as constitutional complications abound in the post-poll Nepal, diplomacy has in some cases even exceeded the limits.
It was largely diplomatic pressure, or persuasion, that came handy for the power-crazy prime minister Girija Prasad Koirala to change his mind on quitting the chair after the poll debacle.
Koirala has been busy receiving foreign diplomats and important calls from foreign capitals.
Taken aback by the strong showing of the Maoists at the hosting key international powers are busy chalking out ways to block the red brigade’s march to Singh Durbar, according to the source.
The US position is said to be “discourage” a Maoist government. Ambassador Nancy Powell has gone to Washington for further consultations on the new developments in Kathmandu.
A one-time ambassador to a key strategic ally, Pakistan, and a diplomat with the intelligence background, the American envoy’s briefing in the State Department and the briefing she will get will certainly carry much more importance than is normally assumed.
Significantly, she has traveled to Washington via Delhi that has the highest stake in Nepal affairs. India has publicly expressed readiness to work with any government. But the influential neighbor’s discomfort is no secret.
The urgency was well underscored by the hectic meetings the newly arrived ambassador Rakesh Sood got engaged in even before presenting his credentials.
Sood presented the credentials on Wednesday. By then, he had already made it to the prime minister’s official residence at Baluwatar to see Koirala and to the party central office at Buddhnagar to visit the Maoist chief Prachanda.
Not far behind was the northern neighbor. China sent a high level delegation of the international department of the ruling communist party. Without big publicity.
The delegation met a cross section of the Nepalese leaders and the intelligentsia in Kathmandu and, even, the ordinary people on the outskirts of the capital valley.
The message was unmistaken, said a China watcher. ‘We too are here. Don’t count us out.’
The Europeans may have reconciled – some are even said to be happy – to the prospect of an ultra left-led government in one of the world’s poorest countries.
Others have not. For obvious reasons. They have a lot more stakes in the geo-politically very strategic Nepal.
They have divergent interests. They collide more often than collude.
Nepal faces the fall-out – mostly negative. The political instability that has plagued the country since its emergence more than two centuries ago is a testimony.
As diplomacy looks set to overtake politics – one more time -- in shaping the future of the much touted New Nepal, bigger challenges await the yam between the two boulders.
