Kathmandu, May 17
Allaying fears that reviewing the 1950 Indo-Nepal Peace and Friendship Treaty will "sabotage" bilateral ties, Maoist chief Prachanda has said he wanted a "close" and "special" relationship with India on the basis of a "new" understanding.
"There should be some sort of special relation between Kathmandu and Delhi.... We want a new relationship with India, which means better relation, better understanding and better cooperation," Pushpa Kamal Dahal, alias Prachanda, said.
The Maoist leader, believed to be Nepal's prime minister-in-waiting, said he wanted "each and every" provision of the treaty to be reviewed in the "new changing context" for "better" relationship between two countries.
"People feel that that it (treaty) is not benefiting them, there is some kind of inequality in it, so people have, time and again, raised concern for reviewing the 1950 treaty," he told Karan Thapar here in an interview for CNN-IBN's Devil's Advocate programme. "I don't think reviewing the treaty will sabotage the relation," he said.
New Delhi has expressed its readiness to have a re-look at the 58-year-old treaty after the Maoists voiced the demand following their triumph in the April Constituent Assembly poll.
Prachanda, however, favoured "equidistant" from both New Delhi and Beijing at the "political level".
"At the political level we will never side one country against another," he said. "We will try to maintain equidistant between Delhi and Beijing in political sense, but not in practical sense and in matters of cooperation." Prachanda denied that he was indulging in doublespeak on ties with India--demanding review of the treaty and seeking "equidistant" from Beijing and New Delhi on one hand and favouring close ties on the other. But political observers think he is indulging in doublespeak.
What can people of Nepal and India make out of such a contradictory statements from Nepal's revolutionary PM waiting?
