NEW DELHI: India Friday rejected a plea by a prominent Nepalese Human Rights Activist not to sign any trade and transit treaty with the present government in Kathmandu.
“We must maintain state to state relations with all our neighbors’’ the external affair ministry spokesman said,
Mr. Hrishikesh Shah, a former Nepalese foreign minister, Thursday said that New Delhi should not show any undue haste to sign any treaty with the Nepalese government as it would dampen the current struggle of the people in the kingdom for multi-party democracy.
The spokesman said that in the case of Nepal, in the months since the National Front government has taken over, “we have covered some grounds towards improving relations”
The spokesman said that the government remained committed to its policy of good neighborliness
However democracy can never be imported or indeed exported. Roots of democracy draw sustenance from the soil which nurtures them. “Mr. Shaha had said that’ government of India should decide whether it wants to have a treaty with the present government or with a government with some political legitimacy”’.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 9, 1990
