India has re-assigned one of its ace diplomats, who has been its key interlocutor for talks with China over the past two years for resolution of the military stand-off along the Line of Actual Control (LAC) in eastern Ladakh.
Naveen Srivastava, presently Additional Secretary (East Asia) in the headquarters of the Ministry of External Affairs, has been appointed as India’s new ambassador to Nepal. He will succeed Vinay Mohan Kwatra, who of late moved from Kathmandu to New Delhi and took over as the new Foreign Secretary.
Srivastava joined the Indian Foreign Service in 1993.
He earlier served as Consul General of India in Shanghai from 2012-to 2015 and Ambassador of India to Cambodia from 2015-to 2017. He also served as Director-General and Corporate Secretary at the New Development Bank set up by the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) nations with headquarters in Shanghai.
Srivastava was heading the East Asia division of the Ministry of External Affairs when the stand-off between the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army along the LAC in eastern Ladakh started in April-May 2020 and reached a flashpoint with the violent face-off in Galwan Valley on June 15, 2020.
He led the delegation of India in all the negotiations with the diplomats of China within the framework of the Working Mechanism for Consultation and Coordination on India-China Border Affairs (WMCC) over the past two years.
The WMCC was set up in 2012 as an institutional mechanism to deal with the flashpoints along the disputed boundary between the two neighbouring nations.
Srivastava also participated in several rounds of talks the senior commanders of the Indian Army and the Chinese People’s Liberation Army held along the LAC over the past two years to resolve the stand-off.
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