US Deputy Assistant Secretary Kelly Keiderling is in Nepal

US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Kelly Keiderling arrived in Nepal on Sunday.

According to the US Embassy in Nepal, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Keiderling will be in Nepal for a few days.

The visit of Deputy Assistant Secretary Kelly Keiderling took place on the 75th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the United States and Nepal.

US Ambassador to Nepal Randy Berry has tweeted about this.

This is her second visit to Nepal in five months. Earlier, she had visited Kathmandu in the third week of November and met with government officials and civil society representatives.

At the same time, Assistant Secretary Donald Lu was on a visit to Nepal.

While the political parties were divided over the parliamentary approval of the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) Nepal Compact in Nepal, the issue of two US officials visiting Nepal together was discussed.

Keiderling is the first senior US official to visit Nepal since the MCC agreement was approved by Nepal's parliament.

Who is Keiderling?

Keiderling is the South and Central Asian Affairs Bureau Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Bangladesh, Bhutan, Maldives, Nepal, and Sri Lanka.
She served as the U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay from 2016-2019, and as the Deputy Commandant / International Affairs Advisor and faculty member at the National War College from 2019-2021. Before her designation as U.S. Ambassador to Uruguay, she served as the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.

Prior to that Washington assignment, Ambassador Keiderling served as Deputy Chief of Mission and intermittently as Charge d’Affaires in Caracas, Venezuela.

She also served as Deputy Chief of Mission in Chisinau, Moldova. In previous overseas assignments, she was Public Affairs Officer in U.S. diplomatic missions in Cuba, Botswana and Kyrgyzstan. Earlier in her career, she held diplomatic positions at the U.S. embassies in the Dominican Republic, Ethiopia, and Zambia.

While serving in Washington at various points of her career, Ambassador Keiderling was Senior Panama Desk Officer, Public Diplomacy Desk Officer for the Caribbean, acting Deputy Director for Central American Affairs, Chief of Staff in the Iraq Office, and Strategic Language Issues Coordinator in the Bureau of Human Resources.