Want UK papers, not mediation, on border issue, clarifies Nepal

NEW DELHI: Nepal has ruled out third-party mediation in the border dispute with India, saying the issue will be resolved through existing diplomatic mechanisms between the two countries. Following Nepal PM Balendra Shah’s remarks last week urging the UK to take an interest in the dispute, India had said there’s no place for mediation by any third country on the issue.

Visiting Nepal foreign minister Shisir Khanal said Sunday Shah was seeking historical records, not mediation, from the UK when he made those remarks. “The PM would want to solve our disputes through diplomatic processes. Clearly, it would require historical evidence. We just wanted to see that we could get access to some of the documents that might be in libraries or museums in the UK. But it was not our position that we were asking for remediation,” said Khanal, the first Nepal minister to visit India under the new govt led by Shah.

Khanal added that no problem was too large and no boundary too complex for India and Nepal to sit down together and resolve with an open heart, a rational mind, and mutual respect.

Khanal said Kathmandu refuses to look at India through the “distorted, hypersensitive lens of 20th-century geopolitics”. “We look at India with an open heart, clear eyes, and a single transparent agenda: the economic transformation of Nepal. When we look across the border, we see a rising India ...that has fundamentally and beautifully redefined itself on the global stage as a dynamic, fast-growing, tech, and economic powerhouse,” he said.