Nepalese foreign secretary leaves for Dhaka for BCM meeting

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 Nepalese Foreign Secretary Shanker Das Bairagi left here for Bangladesh on Saturday to attend a meeting of the Bilateral Consultative Mechanism (BCM).

Bairagi and his Bangladeshi counterpart Shahidul Haque will hold the one-day meeting in Dhaka on Sunday where the entire gamut of bilateral relations will be discussed, according to officials.

“Matters to enhance bilateral cooperation in such areas as trade and investment, transit, connectivity, tourism and people-to-people contacts, education, hydro-power and water resources will be discussed,” the Nepalese foreign secretary told Xinhua before heading to Dhaka.

The two sides will discuss issues of common interests in regional forums such as the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTC) and in the United Nations, foreign ministry officials said here.

The Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on Bilateral Consultations between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Nepal and Bangladesh was signed in July 2012.

The MoU envisaged the establishment of a mechanism for regular consultations between the two foreign ministries to further strengthen the relations between the two countries.

As per the MoU, the foreign secretaries would meet annually to consult on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of common interests of both countries.