India's newly-appointed ambassador to Nepal Naveen Srivastava arrived in Kathmandu on Saturday and was received by senior officials of the Indian embassy in Kathmandu.
Seasoned diplomat Srivastava - who was India’s ambassador to Cambodia from 2015 to 2017 and has served in Washington, Beijing and Hong Kong under different capacities - was appointed India’s new ambassador to Nepal last month.
"@IndiaInNepal welcomes the new Ambassador Shri Naveen Srivastava to Kathmandu,” the Indian embassy in Kathmandu said in a tweet.
The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) announced the appointment of Srivastava, a 1993 batch of Indian Foreign Service (IFS), a day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid a visit to Lumbini in Nepal.
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"Naveen Srivastava, presently Additional Secretary in the ministry, has been appointed as the next Ambassador of India to Nepal. He is expected to take up the assignment shortly,” the MEA had said in a brief statement.
In his capacity as additional secretary in the East Asia division, Srivastava headed the Indian delegation in several rounds of diplomatic talks in the virtual format with China on the eastern Ladakh border row.
He was also part of the Indian delegation in a few rounds of military talks between the two sides on the border row.
Nepal is important for India in the context of its overall strategic interests in the region, and the leaders of the two countries have often noted the age-old “Roti Beti” relationship.
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The Himalayan nation shares a border of over 1,850 km with five Indian states – Sikkim, West Bengal, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.
The land-locked country relies heavily on India for the transportation of goods and services. Nepal’s access to the sea is through India, and it imports a predominant proportion of its requirements from and through India.
The India-Nepal Treaty of Peace and Friendship of 1950 forms the bedrock of the special relations between the two countries.
(with inputs from PTI)
