India, Nepal agree to advance ties

India’s Foreign Secretary Harsh Vardhan Shringla interacted with Nepal’s top leadership and held “productive” talks with his Nepalese counterpart on a range of bilateral issues. Shringla’s maiden visit to the neighbouring nation at the invitation of Foreign Secretary Bharat Raj Paudyal, comes amid a strain in bilateral ties following a bitter border row between the two countries.

Shringla also paid a courtesy call on Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli at the latter’s official residence at Baluwatar. He handed over 2,000 vials of anti-virus drug Remdesivir to Nepal’s Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali as part of India’s continuing assistance to the Himalayan nation to help it contain the COVID-19 pandemic.

“The very large number of issues of bilateral cooperation that we went through, it shows the multi-faceted and comprehensive nature of our cooperation. We both agreed on various steps to advance some areas of cooperation, on very good progress on commitments made by the leadership and looking at some other initiatives that could happen,” Shringla said.