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| Kathmandu Sunday March 17, 2002 Chaitra 04, 2058. |
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Deuba to seek India’s
support to fight Maoists
By Kosmos Biswokarma
KATHMANDU, March 16 The bloody Maoist
insurgency, which has plagued Nepal since 1996, will feature prominently during Prime
Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba’s official visit to neighbouring India.
In his first foreign trip after taking power in
July last year, Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba is leading a 40 plus member delegation
to India on March 20. Senior members of his cabinet, industrialists, parliamentarians and
other high-ranking government officials will also accompany the Prime Minister during the
visit, which will take Deuba to New Delhi, and Kolkata, the Foreign Ministry announced
here Saturday. Deuba is scheduled to return home on March 25.
During his visit, Prime Minister Deuba would
seek the support from the Indian government in its fight against Maoist insurgency, which
has claimed almost 3,000 lives till date. About 1,000 people, mostly Maoists and security
personnel, have been killed in the security operation since November last year when the
government declared the Maoists terrorists and imposed the state of emergency.
As several of the outlawed Maoists are suspected
to have received shelter in various parts of India, PM Deuba is set to ask the Indian
government to discourage these "terrorists" from mobilising their cadres from
India.
Nepal has been abiding by the Indian request not
to allow the Pakistani intelligence agency, ISI, to work in her soil against India, a
highly placed source at the Prime Minister’s Office told The Kathmandu Post.
"So, Nepal too hopes that India should reciprocate in the same vein by not allowing
the terrorists to operate from the Indian soil."
This is why Prime Minister Deuba is also
visiting Kolkata and holding discussion with the government of West Bengal, claimed the
source. As the State has been a breeding ground for the hard-line Naxalites for a long
time, the Nepalese government here believes that the Maoist leaders are operating their
movement from this State.
The warring Maoists had publicly accepted few
months ago that they have contacts and working relations with various Indian extremist
forces like Maoist Co-ordination Council of West Bengal and People’s War Group of
Andhra Pradesh.
Nepal is also expected to seek financial and
logistics support from the Indian government, which had earlier provided two choppers and
some other equipment to fight the Maoists.
PM Deuba is also expected to raise the issue of
Achham incident where some Indian guerillas were suspected to have involved in attacking
Mangalsen and Sanfebagar, one of the cabinet members told The Kathmandu Post. The biggest
ever Maoists’ attack in Achham on February 17 had claimed about 150 lives, mostly
security personnel.
Besides the insurgency, whole gamut of
Indo-Nepal relations will be discussed during Deuba’s visit, officials at the PMO
said.
Possible co-operation in developing hydropower
projects for the benefits of both nations and solving the existing problems in more than
1,800 kilometres long open border between the two countries would feature during the
visit, according to the officials. The officials also said that PM Deuba would try to
solve the practical problems existing in the bilateral Trade Treaty, which the two
countries renewed on March 2 in New Delhi.
PM Deuba is also expected to ask the Indian
government to finalise the DPR (Detailed Project Report) of Pancheswor Hydropower Project
in west Nepal, adjoining the Indian State of Uttaranchal, which would bring a drastic
change in the lives of poor citizens of west Nepal and newly-created Uttaranchal.
The Indian government is known to have expressed
its sincere desire to develop the 366-megawatt Upper Karnali Project, which is one of the
cheapest power projects. But the Nepal government has requested its Indian counterpart to
invest in more expensive Budhi Gandaki Power Project also which has a capacity to produce
700 to 900 megawatt of electricity.
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