KATHMANDU: Prime Minister Balendra Shah is set to hold separate meetings with foreign ambassadors on Monday, marking a significant departure from his earlier practice of avoiding individual engagements with diplomatic representatives.

Sources said Shah will meet Indian Ambassador Naveen Srivastava and Chinese Ambassador Zhang Maoming separately on Monday, while US Embassy Chargé d’Affaires Scott Urbom is scheduled to meet him on Tuesday.

The meetings had originally been planned about two weeks ago, but were postponed following communal violence in Sunsari and several other districts.

Diplomatic observers view the decision to meet the Indian and Chinese ambassadors on the same day as an effort to demonstrate the equal importance Nepal attaches to its two immediate neighbours. However, the sequence of the meetings is also being interpreted as consistent with the government’s stated foreign policy priority of engaging India first and China afterward.

According to officials, Srivastava is expected to meet the prime minister in the first half of Monday, while Zhang is scheduled for the latter half of the day. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has already communicated the appointments to the respective embassies.

These meetings will be Shah’s first individual courtesy calls with Kathmandu-based ambassadors since taking office on March 27. The discussions are expected to focus primarily on the status of bilateral relations and any messages conveyed by the respective governments.