Kathmandu, December 23

Minister of Foreign Affairs Pradeep Kumar Gyawali today made it clear that Nepal was not a part of the United States’s “Indo-Pacific Strategy”.

Speaking at a media briefing after returning from his recent US visit, Gyawali said he and his American counterpart Michael Pompeo discussed a host of issues related to the Indo-Pacific region but no such strategy.

The Indo-Pacific strategy is an idea of the US to connect the Indian Ocean and the Pacific region, to safeguard its own leadership and interests in the region.

“We discussed Nepal’s central role in the Indo-Pacific region, but not on the basis of strategic partnership,” he said, adding the two sides also discussed the peace process in the Korean Peninsula.

He said the two sides also discussed possible visits to and from the US at the level of head of government/state. There has not been such visits between the two countries in the past three decades. In 1983, then King Birendra had made an official visit to the US.