You can’t tell your father that you’ll replace him with your mother or vice versa, Nepal Foreign Minister Shisir Khanal told NDTV, underscoring the importance of both India and China to the small Himalayan nation, refusing to pick sides between the two South Asian Goliaths.
“I often like to think of relationships from the perspective of our relationship as human beings with our family, right? We do have a balanced relationship with our siblings or our parents. Each relationship is unique, and they have their own unique merit, and we have to look at these relationships in those unique terms from history, civilization, engagement. It is something that I’m striving towards as a foreign policy, as foreign minister. “Oftentimes, I don’t know but our friends in India like to somehow feel and that’s the media narrative I see coming from the south, is that somehow Nepal has been almost captured by our northern neighbour. Again, we have a wonderful relationship with China and we’d like to continue to maintain that relationship.
The Minister said there’s already a framework agreement between Nepal and India to export 10,000 megawatts of electricity.
the Minister underlined that his country’s relationship dynamics are based on “national interest” While answering a question on “balanced diplomacy”. My job is to think about work towards strengthening Nepal’s national interest, so our relationship dynamics are based on Nepal’s national interest rather than anything else,” he said. The Minister said he wants to disabuse the world of the notion that his country is “captured by our northern neighbour”, which is China. Again, that relationship also has the civilizational dynamics with Nepal and hundreds of years of history of trade and economic cooperation between the two,” the Minister said. Asked what is his message to Indian companies who are looking to step up ties with Nepal, the Minister said Kathmandu is “open for business”.
