KATHMANDU: A senior US official has hoped that Nepal will not take ‘dictation from China’ on the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) grant that the Nepal government has agreed earlier to utilize for developing power transmission lines and road projects.
Expressing displeasure over some ‘unnecessary’ controversies about the grant in Nepal, Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs of Department of State Alice G Wells said the government of Nepal is sovereign, that it does not take dictation from China.
Speaking to journalists from Central and South Asia at a virtual press briefing, she hoped that Nepal will do what is in its best interests to advance the economic welfare of its people.
The statement comes at a time when leaders of the ruling Nepal Communist Party (NCP) are divided over the $500 MCC grant agreement—whether or not it should be endorsed from the parliament.
She was responding to wide speculations whether China was trying to hinder the passage of the MCC deal from Nepal’s Parliament.
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary Wells also said that “there’s been a great deal of misinformation and disinformation about America’s assistance to Nepal.”
The MCC, she added, is entirely “unrelated to President Trump’s vision of an Indo-Pacific that’s free and open.”
She also expressed her displeasure that the MCC has “become a political football” in Nepal while clarifying that this is one of several programs that the US has utilized to help grow relations with Nepal and to help Nepal develop.
Wells said that the debates emerged in Nepal about MCC is nothing but as ‘offshoot’ of internal politics, and also hoped that that Nepali leaders will stand up for the people and move forward with the MCC.
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