Nepal has turned down offers from several countries to send search and rescue teams, saying its own security agencies can run the operation. The Times of India carried it at fifteenth on the Indian reading list; the decision matters to India because India was one of the countries offering.
The Kathmandu Post, which reported it first and which the Indian account cites, lists who asked: India, China, the United States, Britain, Japan, South Korea, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. "We received similar requests from China and other countries too, but we had to turn down the request," a foreign ministry official told it. The ministry's line, as Reuters carried it, was blunter: no help needed with the rescue operation from other countries.
The reason given is 2015. After the earthquake that year, the arrival of many foreign rescue teams at once created coordination and management problems, and the government decided not to repeat it. What it wants instead is money, through a single channel — the government has told its diplomatic missions to route foreign assistance through the prime minister's relief fund, and says further support will be sought during rehabilitation and reconstruction.
Not everyone treats it as final. The Korea Times reports the refusal and, in the same headline, that Korea says it is still negotiating.
The numbers move even inside one article. The Times of India's headline says the toll is nearing 500; its first sentence says at least 469 killed; and further down it gives Nepal Police's Friday figures — 469 dead, 1,545 rescued and injured, nearly 1,000 still missing according to disaster authorities, and 28 police officers among them. The Kathmandu Post puts the missing foreign nationals at 517, the same figure a French broadcaster gave us yesterday.
Why it is on the board
Fifteenth on the Times of India's most-read list when we collected.
That is low for a story in which India was one of the countries turned away. Of the fourteen items above it, three are box-office and cast items for a single film, and two are Times of India explainers that open with a year — 2016 and 2009.
확인: The Times of India · The Kathmandu Post · The Korea Times