UN General Secretary Kofi Annan's last-minute decision to visit Nepal on a two-day tour 12-13 March is being interpreted as a diplomatic success. The government expects Annan's tour to give a push to its proposal to develop the Kavre-based UN Training Centre into a UN Regional Peacekeeping Centre. Annan's visit to the training centre comes on the heels of other high-profile visits, by Mongolian president Natsagiin Bagabandi, Chinese defence minister General Chi Haotian, and British defence minister Geoffrey Hoon.

Before Nepali soldiers go on peacekeeping duty overseas, they are trained at the centre at Kavre for six months with counterparts from foreign armed forces. If Annan's visit provides the hoped-for impetus to transform the Kavre training centre into a peacekeeping centre, Nepal will soon host a Multi-Platoon Training Exercise. The Ministry of Defence in Kathmandu says 625 Nepali soldiers are serving in the UN force in Lebanon, 225 in East Timor, and a few others in places like Kosovo or Congo as observers. There are also over 100 Nepali police personnel serving in UN-related missions. The number deployed is significantly down from about the all-time high of 2,400 in 1995. Nepal first sent soldiers on peacekeeping duty in 1958 to Lebanon, three years after Nepal joined the UN.