By Manish Chand, IANS,
Addu (Maldives) : Nearly three weeks after they met in New Delhi, India’s Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Nepali counterpart Baburam Bhattarai Friday held bilateral talks here and pushed for early signing of a double tax avoidance agreement.
The two leaders held talks for around half an hour on the margins of the 17th SAARC summit in the idyllic Shangri-La resort and reviewed the implementation of projects agreed upon during Bhattarai’s visit to India last month.
Bhattarai renewed the invitation to Manmohan Singh to visit Nepal and stressed that the trip would give a big push to bilateral ties, said official sources.
Building upon a bilateral investment protection agreement inked last month, the two sides decided to accelerate their economic ties by pushing for an early signing of the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement.
Manmohan Singh is understood to have assured Bhattarai that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee would visit Nepal to sign the agreement. The agreement could not be signed during Bhattarai’s visit to India last month due to last-minute differences over some features of the proposed pact.
Manmohan Singh welcomed a seven-point pact among Nepal’s political parties that entails drafting of former Maoist combatants into the army and expressed optimism about the speedy conclusion of the constitution-making process there.
India had welcomed the seven-point agreement, saying it will take the integration and rehabilitation of Maoist combatants to its “logical conclusion.”
(Manish Chand can be contacted at [email protected])