KATHMANDU: Nepal is mulling over the ‘pros and cons’ of joining the US-led Indo Pacific Strategy and its long term benefits coming in its way.
However, US insistence of bringing Nepal into ‘Indo Pacific Strategy’ has put the Himalayan country into ‘diplomatic dilemma’ since it has constantly refuted any move to join ‘international defense grouping’.
US report claims that Nepal is very much the part of defense grouping in its recently released ‘Indo Pacific Strategy Report’, which Nepal has so far refused. U.S. Department of Defense in its ‘Indo Pacific Strategy Report’ stated that Nepal, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh have agreed to participate in the upcoming events of ‘Indo Pacific Strategy’.
The national debate is raging in Nepal since last December whether the country has sided with the United States in international defense strategy abandoning the long-cherished principles of neutrality and non-alignment.
The doubt of shifting the goal of Nepal’s foreign policy gets all the more real in wake of U.S. Indo-Pacific Strategy Report released last Saturday. Experts in Nepal refer to the meeting of Nepal’s Foreign Minister Pradeep Kumar Gyawali with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in Washington D.C. as proof of impending shift to country’s foreign policy.
How hard the U.S. is trying to take Nepal on board, Nepal has yet to come out clear about its stance, says a highly-placed government official. The furor over Nepal’s shift in foreign policy is not dying down as Nepal has in an official statement stated that Nepal-US relations is all time high and is likely to deepen further, though there is no mention of ‘Indo-Pacific Strategy’ in it.
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