Nepal’s Home Minister visits China to discuss security against Tibetans

(TibetanReview.net, Feb07, 2010) Nepal’s Home Minister Mr Bhim Rawal Feb 6 led an eight-member delegation on a week-long visit to Lhasa and Beijing to discuss border control and preventing so-called “anti-China” activities by Tibetans on Nepal’s soil, according to the IANS news service Feb 6.

The report said Rawal, accompanied by the chiefs of Nepal Police, Armed Police and state intelligence agency National Investigation Department, would discuss security cooperation along the Tibet-Nepal border areas with his Chinese counterpart. It added that Rawal was going to discuss border security with China in a bid to prevent protests by Tibetan refugees in Nepal in 2010 and the mass fleeing of Tibetans to India via Nepal.

The report said Nepal had already deployed armed policemen to patrol 10 of the districts in the north along the border it shares with Tibet at Beijing’s prodding, causing a dramatic fall in the number of Tibetans fleeing their occupied country. It noted that China was especially concerned about alleged anti-China activities in Nepal’s northernmost district of Mustang, an ancient Tibetan kingdom and a Tibetan guerilla base in the 1960s.

Nepal had earlier requested a postponement of a ground-breaking meeting of the home ministers of SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation) scheduled to be held in Pakistan apparently to enable Rawal to undertake the China trip.

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