Days after pulling out of the Bimstec joint military exercise in India at the last minute, the Nepal Army on Monday began its second wargame with the Chinese military at Chengdu.<\/p>\n
The \u201cSagarmatha Friendship-2\u201d military exercise in China\u2019s Sichuan province will last 10 days. Both sides have fielded a platoon for the drill that will focus on counter-terrorism and disaster management.<\/p>\n
Amid widespread criticism, Nepal pulled out of the first Bimstec military exercise, which concluded in Pune on Sunday. Observers in New Delhi said Nepal\u2019s decision not to participate amounted to a \u201cdiplomatic loss\u201d for India.<\/p>\n
Three officials familiar with developments in Kathmandu said Nepal\u2019s absence at the Bimstec military exercise was due to a \u201cprocedural failure\u201d on the part of both Nepal and India.<\/p>\n
\u201cIndia\u2019s unilateral decision and announcement about conducting the drill was responsible for Nepal\u2019s cancellation, but it was our procedure lapse too,\u201d one official said.<\/p>\n
After Nepal\u2019s said it would not join the exercise in Pune, foreign minister Pradeep Gyawali said the proposal for the joint drill did not come up at any level at the Bimstec Summit in Kathmandu during August 30-31. In view of its close security ties with India, Nepal sent an observer for the drill.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf India had circulated the proposal through the Dhaka-based Bimstec Secretariat to member states, none of them would have skipped the drill like Nepal and Thailand did,\u201d the official said.<\/p>\n
The Nepal Army, which received the proposal from the Indian side, did not consult other stakeholders such as the Prime Minister\u2019s Office, the foreign minister or the cabinet. \u201cOn our side it was purely a procedure lapse and a lack of coordination among state agencies,\u201d the official added.<\/p>\n
With sections of the media describing the Bimstec drill as an effort to \u201cshow up China and isolate Pakistan\u201d, commentators and editorials in Nepal urged the government not to take part in any exercise that could jeopardise Nepal\u2019s ties with other nations and turn Bimstec into a \u201cmilitary bloc\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen it became public that the Nepal Army had not consulted even the defence ministry prior to the Bimstec Summit, it caused embarrassment for us. If the army had consulted others before the controversy erupted in Kathmandu, the matter could have been discussed at the top political level and sorted out in time,\u201d a second official said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Days after pulling out of the Bimstec joint military exercise in India at the last minute, the Nepal Army on Monday began its second wargame with the Chinese military at Chengdu. The \u201cSagarmatha Friendship-2\u201d military exercise in China\u2019s Sichuan province will last 10 days. Both sides have fielded a platoon for the drill that will […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":42410,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-42409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":42411,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42409\/revisions\/42411"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}