Nepal, Koirala get set for junkets

Himalayan News Service

KATHMANDU: Both Prime Minister Madhav Kumar Nepal and Deputy Prime Minister Sujata Koirala will be separately attending various conferences next month.

PM Nepal, who returned home from St Petersburg of Russia after attending an international conference on tiger conservation on Thursday, is heading for Cambodia on Tuesday to participate in the sixth International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) scheduled for December 1 to 4 in Phnom Penh. He is a member of the Standing Committee of ICAPP.

The prime minister is attending at the invitation of his Cambodian counterpart Hun Sen, according Rajan Bhattarai, the PM’s Foreign Affairs Adviser. Bhattarai, Chief of Protocol Mukti Nath Bhatta and South East Asia Division Chief at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MoFA) Rudra Nepal are accompanying the PM’s six-member delegation.

PM Nepal will be addressing the conference. More than 100 Asian political parties, including some from Nepal, are expected to participate.

The prime minister will then head for Brussels in Belgium to attend the European Development Day at the invitation of European Commission President, José Manuel Barroso. The two-day ceremony will kick off in December 6. The PM will return home on December 9.

A source informed that his wife Gayatri’s name was deleted from the list of delegates at the last minute due to their only daughter’s wedding ceremony tomorrow. He returned from Russia on Thursday cutting short his six-day-visit for the same reason.

Likewise, DPM Koirala is heading for three South East Asian nations —Thailand, Myanmar and Indonesia to attend three different conferences. She will be away for three weeks.

According to a MoFA official, Koirala will leave for Indonesia to attend the third Bali Democracy Forum (December 9 to 10), which she will address. She will then leave for Bangkok to participate in the Asia-Middle Dialogue. Then, she will take part in the annual meeting of foreign ministers of BIMSTEC countries in Myanmar in the fourth week of December. Koirala is expected to return on December 29.