Fruitful Visit

PRESIDENT of Mongolia Natsagiin Bagabandi, accompanied by his wife Madame A. Oyumbileg, senior officials and businessmen, concluded his three-day State Visit to Nepal, which has been described as fruitful and meaningful in strengthening bilateral relations and expanding economic cooperation between Nepal and Mongolia. A joint statement was issued at the end of Mongolian president’s State Visit, which states that both Nepal and Mongolia reviewed the present state of bilateral relations and agreed to explore and utilise possibilities of expanding trade and economic cooperation. Nepal and Mongolia had signed a trade agreement in 1992, which both the countries now want to put into practice in order to boost Nepal-Mongolia trade and economic cooperation. President Bagabandi invited His Majesty the King and Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala to visit to Mongolia at their convenient time, which both His Majesty the King and Prime Minister Koirala have accepted with pleasure. Mongolia has shown a keen interest to explore the possibilities of exporting wool to Nepal while Nepal has put forward the proposal to export Nepalese handicraft products especially Buddhist artifacts to Mongolia. As Both Mongolian and Nepal are landlocked, developing and high land countries, there is a strong possibilities of cooperation in the field of agriculture and high land pasturing for which both the countries have agreed to assist one another. Mongolia even went to offer some scholarships to Nepal in the field of agriculture and high land pasturing. The most important of all is the Mongolia’s interest to send its defence personnel to Nepal for peace keeping training at the Royal Nepalese Army’s peacekeeping Training Center, to which Nepal has said to give a most favourable consideration. As Nepal has been making a significant contribution to United Nations’ efforts in peacekeeping and peace building in different troubles spots in the world, Mongolia’s desire to train its defence personnel on peace keeping operation in Nepal is an international recognition of Nepal’s high quality training in peace keeping. It is also a big success of Nepal’s foreign policy, which is, of course, a matter of pride for Nepal. Nepal and Mongolia also signed a framework agreement covering all these issues, which is taken as an important milestone in the history of relations between these two countries. Despite the establishment of diplomatic relations more than 30 years ago and many similarities cooperation and relations between Nepal and Mongolia are so far limited. But Bagabandi’s recent State Visit would contribute a lot in expanding meaningful and practical relations and cooperation between Nepal and Mongolia.

NC Handshake

WITH the no-trust move defeated, Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala has done the right thing by reaching out to the Nepali Congress dissident group. Speaking at a tea party hosted with unity as the theme, the Prime Minister said that regular meetings, dialogues and good relations cimprise the preliminary phase of unity. Only the naive would believe that once the no-confidence motion by the NC dissident group led by former prime minister Sher Bahadur Deuba was beaten squarely by the majority of the members of the NC parliamentary party, voices of discord will disappear automatically. The motion, which was defeated by 69 votes, was a result of some disgruntlement that cannot be expected to vanish over night. But look forward the Nepali Congress must. The internal wrangling does not only cost the ruling party the stability it needs to move ahead, but also affects the country’s governance. Precisely in tune with the need to unite, the prime minister is doing his bit to assuage the dissidents’ wounds. His hosting the tea party and his observation that Nepali Congress has to be united to tackle the problems facing the nation should strike the right chord in the NC rebel camp’s rank and file. It is significant that the gathering was attended by the main leaders across the NC divide-former prime ministers Krishna Prasad Bhattarai and Sher Bahadur Deuba. The latter also expressed his opinion at the get-together that the leadership must pay attention to the views of the dissatisfied section in the party. That would mean unity for the party in actual terms.

As far as can be seen, the dissident groups views were to the effect that the country needed better governanace. They had wanted the party to which they belong, to govern the country better. The problems confronting the nation, they had said, needed to be tackled earnestly. So, they thought maybe a, change of leadership would do the trick. Now that the majority of the NC MPs have stated a categorical "no" to their move and expressed their full trust in Mr. Koirala’s leadership, it is only reasonable for them to let the recent internal party politics rest and get solidly behind the prime minister. It goes without saying that any political party, after such bouts of internal tumult however democratic, has to make some extra endeavours to come to peace. Oherwise, governance suffers. The average Nepali would hope that the reconciliatory words expessed by both Prime Minister Koirala and Mr. Deba at the tea party Sunday and the apparent handshake will stand the test of time, and that the ruling party gets on more seriously with the business of governing.