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India ‘releases’ 11 containers
- Kantipur hopes remaining ones will be here soon
KATHMANDU, JUN 25 -
Following talks with Kantipur Publications on Friday, Indian Embassy officials said port authorities in Kolkata have released 11 containers of newsprint later in the day. Twenty-eight more containers will be released by Monday, the officials assured the publications.
Around 1,000 metric tonnes of Kathmandu-bound newsprint imported by Kantipur from Canada and Korea has remained stranded in Kolkata for the past one month in what the publications believes is in violation of Nepal’s international transit right and the Nepal-India transit treaty. Starting at 11 a.m. the publications’ Chairman and Managing Director Kailash Sirohiya and Indian Ambassador Rakesh Sood held talks for more than two hours. The parleys later extended over several rounds of telephone conversations between Kantipur and embassy officials. In the meeting, Sirohiya asked the ambassador to secure the release of the newsprint held without any reason, according to a statement released by Sirohiya. “Ambassador Sood said he will fully cooperate for the early resolution of the problem.”
“As per the discussion with Ambassador Sood, we’re hopeful that the remaining 28 containers will also be released by Monday,” Sirohiya said. “We are confident that the newsprint imported from third countries, with India as transit, would get unhindered access to Nepal, as in the past as per the transit treaty between the two countries.”
An Indian embassy press statement said Sirohiya was informed that the embassy had already taken steps to try and resolve the hold-up, based on the request made by Kantipur Publications, adding “had undue publicity to a routine administrative matter not been given, the matter could have been resolved earlier.”
The publications, on Wednesday, decided to make the stand-off public after 26 days of silence and official obfuscation. “Mr. Sirohiya has assured full cooperation on the part of Kantipur Publications in order to enable the resolution of the matter at the earliest,” the embassy said.
Sirohiya stressed his talks with Sood had been cordial and that his understanding was that none of the 39 containers would be in Kolkata by Monday. “As importantly, I sincerely hope there would be no such hold-up in the future.” With the hold-up seemingly resolved, Sirohiya expressed sincere gratitude to political parties and their leaders, the media fraternity, professional organisations, business community, civil society, right defenders and well wishers for their solidarity during the crisis.
Posted on: 2010-06-26 07:26
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