KATHMANDU,July 17

Leaders and foreign policy experts have opposed the Constituent Assembly Chairman Subas Chandra Nembang’s decision to circulate Greater Nepal campaigner’s memorandum to all the political parties represented in the CA.

Nembang, however, said he had been sending all the memoranda to the political parties and he did the same with the one submitted by the Greater Nepal Nationalist Front.

The Greater Nepal Nationalist Front has demanded to include a provision to form a High-Level Sugauli Treaty Study and Suggestion Commission in the new constitution.

Nepali Congress Spokesperson Dilendra Prasad Badu said it was not appropriate on the part of the CA chair to forward the issue to the political parties. “It is not time to flare up pre-Sugauli Treaty issues. We need to focus on post-Sugauli Treaty boundary and protect it,” Badu said, adding that if old issues were raked up, more serious issues could be sidelined.

Nepal’s former ambassador to Denmark Vijay Kant Karna said CA chair’s decision to circulate the memorandum was against Nepal’s foreign policy that states that Nepal would not allow its soil to be used against any friendly country.

“We have signed treaties with India and China and our boundaries have been defined so we do not need to flare up the issue now,” Karna said, adding that the talk of pre-Sugauli Treaty border could affect Nepal’s relations with India and even the United Kingdom.

International law expert Laxman Prasad Upadhyay said, “When someone does not claim their right for long, they lose it. The issue of Sugauli Treaty is history and we cannot revive it,” he said. Former speaker of the Legislature Parliament and one of the drafters of 1990 constitution Daman Nath Dhungana said the issue of forming commissions fell under the jurisdiction of the government and CA had nothing to do with it.

UML Secretary Prithvi Subba Gurung also claimed that forming commissions was not the task of the Constituent Assembly and that the government should look after such issues.