Nepal To Participate In Military Exercise With China Later This Month: China's Military Journal

Nepal, which pulled out of a joint military exercise with littoral nations of the Bay of Bengal, in a snub to India, is now all set to participate in a 12-day-long military exercise with China later this month.

BEIJING, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 13th Sep, 2018 ) :Nepal, which pulled out of a joint military exercise with littoral nations of the Bay of Bengal, in a snub to India, is now all set to participate in a 12-day-long military exercise with China later this month.

The second Nepal-China military drill will take place after Nepal boycotted the first-ever joint military exercise by the BIMSTEC countries held in India, Chinese military journal "China Military" reported quoting Indian media on Thursday.

Nepal Army spokesperson Brig Gen Gokul Bhandaree said that the military exercise with China, called Sagarmatha Friendship-2, is scheduled to take place from 17 to 28 September in Chengdu in China.

He said that the main focus of the exercise will be on the counter-terror operations.

The China-Nepal joint military exercise, which started for the first time last year, had sparked concerns in India over the growing security cooperation between its two neighbours.

This time it is more worrisome as the second Nepal-China military exercise takes place after the Nepal government ordered its military to pull out from the first-ever joint military exercise by the Bimstec countries.

The Indian media report quoted sources as suggesting that Nepal does not agree with India's attempts to promote security and defence cooperation within Bimstec countries.

Nepal Prime Minister K P Oli's aide Kundan Aryal made the announcement regarding Nepal's non-participation in the Bimstec exercise last week, barely a month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi welcomed the "multi-national military field training exercise" at the Bimstec summit held in Kathmandu last month.

Nepal's decision to withdraw from the Bimstec joint military exercise comes just after China granted it access to four seaports and three land ports, in a move to reduce Nepal's dependency on India.

Nepal will now have access to Shenzen, Lianyungang, Zhanjiang, and Tianjin, as well as use Lanzhou, Lhasa and Xigatse land ports (dry ports).