Nepal to sign Extradition Treaty with India Home Minister Krishna Prasad Situala is heading for New Delhi on October 4 to sign the Extradition Treaty and Treaty on Mutual Legal Assistance. Sitaula will be accompanied by officials at the Ministry of Law. The new treaty will replace the 50-year-old extradition treaty between the two neighbors. The Treaty on MLA will facilitate legal aspects of implementing the extradition treaty. Earlier, on January 20 of 2005, the two treaties were initialed by the Home Secretaries of Nepal and India in New Delhi. Then, it was stated that the treaties would come into force after the Home Ministers of the two countries sign it. After the initialing of the two treaties, the political change in Nepal and the turbulent aftermath probably had delayed the formal signing by the Home Ministers – which is now taking place next week. Officials have been saying that the updated treaty and MLA have provisions to help investigators (of the two countries) reach the suspects and smoothen the court proceedings. In January of 2005, then Nepalese Home Secretary Chandi Prasad Shrestha had told reporters that "these provisions do not mean that Indian police can do anything inside Nepal." He was responding to concerns raised by a section of people in Nepal that in the updated treaty Nepal had agreed to extradite even third country nationals. Officials further noted that the two treaties were aimed at checking the growing nexus between left wing extremists in two neighbors, combating terrorism and other cross border criminal activities. Later in April of 2005, the Indian cabinet had formally endorsed the Nepal-India Extradition Treaty and Mutual Legal Assistance. "The treaty will be effective to discourage criminal activities," read the statement issued after the Indian cabinet endorsed it. Whether the Extradition Treaty and MLA that the Home Ministers of two countries are set to sign next week in New Delhi is the same one or it has been amended in the meantime is not clear yet. nepalnews.com sd Sep 30 06 http://www.nepalnews.com/archive/2006/sep/sep30/news02.php