Senior leaders and foreign policy experts pressed the Nepali Congress on Sunday to move beyond broad invocations of non-alignment and sovereignty and adopt a clear, specific foreign policy as the party opened its 15th General Convention in Kathmandu.
The speakers said the party should spell out how it will manage ties with India and China, its immediate neighbors, along with other major powers, put economic diplomacy at the center of its approach and defend its strategic autonomy while broadening international partnerships. Congress has traditionally followed a foreign policy first drafted by its founding president, BP Koirala, and amended over the years.
Dinesh Bhattarai, who advised former prime ministers Sher Bahadur Deuba and Sushil Koirala on foreign policy, said the new document should rest on “continuity with change” without compromising basic principles. “The party’s foreign policy is clear and consistent as of now,” he said. “Be it out of power and inside the power, its foreign policy remains unchanged. But in the changed domestic, regional and global contexts, it should be dynamic, forward looking, pragmatic.” He said the neighborhood-first priority the party declared in 2015 should remain, alongside constructive engagement with the wider world.
Minendra Rijal, a senior Congress leader and former minister, warned against using foreign policy to appease domestic nationalist sentiment. Citing Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada, he said Nepal must sustain dialogue and pursue its national interest even where it disagrees with powerful neighbors. But dialogue without substance achieves little, he said: strategic autonomy cannot come from slogans alone, given Nepal’s structural dependence on India, the limits of its electricity market and the dispute over the United States-funded Millennium Challenge Corporation compact before its parliamentary ratification.
Mr. Rijal also said the policy must be sensitive to the neighbors’ concerns. Drawing on his time as a minister, he said even small diplomatic gestures carry weight with China on questions like Tibet and the Dalai Lama, a geopolitical sensitivity Congress cannot ignore. A country’s real standing abroad, he argued, comes from domestic capacity; autonomy in practice requires stronger institutions, stronger implementation and a stronger economy.
Gaurab Sumsher Thapa, secretary at the Nepal Council of World Affairs, said Congress should orient its foreign policy toward economic development, noting that Congress-led governments began economic liberalization in the early 1990s and helped end the Maoist conflict and usher in the republic.
He laid out what that would mean partner by partner. With India, he said, the party should lead with trade, foreign direct investment and connectivity, set aside long-standing political disputes and lean on cultural ties. With China, it should support the one-China policy and, rather than set lofty targets around the Belt and Road Initiative, focus on viable bilateral projects. As for the United States, ties should rest on economic and developmental cooperation rather than support for “its regional and global security ambitions,” he said.
Nepal’s constitution commits the country to non-alignment, Panchsheel, the UN Charter, international law and world peace, and the speakers said Congress should pursue a pragmatic policy inside that frame. “The 15th General Convention gives the Nepali Congress an opportunity to take up this discussion in a substantive way,” Mr. Rijal said. “The leadership election will decide who leads the party, but the foreign policy adopted by the convention could shape the international role the party seeks for Nepal in the years ahead.”