India to help Nepal to rehabilitate Maoist combatants

Kathmandu, May 5 : India is likely to offer help to Nepal to rehabilitate Maoist combatants deployed in the cantonments.

The offer includes vocational training courses, Kantipur Report quoted an Indian daily. About 30,000 combatants are currently living in 28 cantonments and being monitored by the United Nations Mission in Nepal after they had laid down their arms in the run up to the recent Constituent Assembly elections.

"Training 30,000 men would be a small, but significant goodwill gesture toward the people of Nepal. Details of how and where to train these people will be worked out in consultation with the Nepalese government," the newspaper quoted External Affairs Ministry sources, as saying.

This offer from India came after China's announcement to lay a railway line till the Nepal border.

According to the newspaper, India is also likely to announce the construction of an oil pipeline from Barauni Refinery in Bihar to Raxaul on the India-Nepal border to replace the existing arrangement of sending tankers that carry crude from India.

Although the Indian Oil Corporation and the Nepal Oil Corporation have signed an MoU for the construction of the pipeline from Raxaul to Amlekhgunj on the Nepal side, it is yet to start.

The Indian government's initial package to Nepal would also include fast upgradation and augmentation of Nepal-India road links, which are presently in bad shape.

ANI