NEPAL PM: WILL PLAY IMPORTANT ROLE TO HOST SAARC SUMMIT

Nepal would facilitate the holding of the stalled 19th Saarc summit in Pakistan, the country’s Prime Minister K P Oli has said.

Oli made the assurance on Sunday during a meeting with former Pakistani prime minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who is in Nepal to take part in the Asia Pacific Summit in Kathmandu.

As the current chair of Saarc, Nepal would play an important role to hold the summit in Pakistan, Oli’s foreign relations adviser Rajan Bhattarai said after the meeting.

“Nepal is desperate to hand over the chairmanship,” he added. The host country of the summit gets the chairmanship.

At the 18th summit of the regional grouping in Kathmandu, it was decided to hold the next meeting in Pakistan. But attacks in India by Pakistanbased terrorists led to the freezing of the summit.

Last week, India dismissed as “posturing” Pakistan’s move to invite Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the summit in Islamabad.

If one country decides to abstain from the summit, it gets cancelled automatically, according to the Saarc process.

Bhattarai said Gilani told Oli that Pakistani people and political parties were committed to Saarc and ready to host the summit.

Oli reiterated that Nepal was for making Saarc an effective regional organisation. HTC

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