Bangladesh wishes to have normal relation with Pakistan: Foreign Affairs Adviser of Bangladesh

Md Touhid Hossain, adviser for Foreign Affairs of the interim government of Bangladesh. File.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Bangladesh wishes to have a normal relation with Pakistan, said the Foreign Affairs Adviser of the interim government of Bangladesh. In a media interview telecast on Tuesday, Foreign Affairs Adviser Mohammed Touhid Hossein said that Bangladesh’s relation with Pakistan should not be limited within the triangular relation involving India.

“For the last several years, relation with Pakistan was cold. Pakistan wants to come out of that phase. We also want to move ahead in the relation with Pakistan to the extent possible. We have a few issues with Pakistan about which discussions have been stalled. We intend to build a normal relation in which Pakistan will look after its interest and we will look after our interests,” said Mohammed Touhid Hossein during an interview with BBC Bangla.

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He had supported closer ties with Pakistan during a press interaction on September 2, saying, “There is no benefit to be gained by creating enmity with Bangladesh.”

Reiteration of Dhaka’s current position on Pakistan by Mr Hossein, provides a clearer impression about the interim government’s plans on Pakistan with which Bangladesh has had a complicated relation since its birth in 1971. The Sheikh Hasina-led Awami League government that was toppled on August 5 by a student-people uprising, had an antithetical relation with Pakistan and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina often accused her political opponents of enjoying Islamabad’s support. Her father and founder of Bangladesh Sheikh Mujibur Rahman fought against Pakistan to establish Bangladesh and Ms Hasina often highlighted that struggle to mobilise her support base at home. Due to this attitude of Ms Hasina, meetings between top officials of the Bangladesh government and Pakistan High Commission were a rarity in the previous sixteen years. But that has changed after the arrival of the interim government.

After the fall of the Hasina administration, Syed Ahmed Maroof, the High Commissioner of Pakistan reached out to the interim government’s Chief Adviser Mohammed Yunus and held meetings with several other officials.

Apart from Mohammed Touhid Hossein, Pakistan High Commissioner Maroof also met with fisheries adviser Farida Akhter, education adviser Bidhan Chandra Roy Poddar, finance adviser Salehuddin Ahmed, and adviser on religious affairs AFM Khalid Hossein. That apart, the Dhaka Press Club held a meeting on the death anniversary of Pakistan’s founder Mohammed Ali Jinnah on September 11 and the High Commissioner of Pakistan visited the Dhaka University where he interacted with the university authorities. It has been learnt that the Pakistani envoy sought establishment of direct flights between Pakistan and Bangladesh and in this regard on September 11 hosted in his office a team of officials from the U.S.-Bangla Airlines, a major airline company of Bangaldesh

These interactions have provided the context to the reports that Chief Adviser Yunus is expected to meet Pakistan PM Shehbaz Sharif in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly’s annual meeting. PM Sharif had spoken with Prof Yunus on August 30 in which the two leaders discussed the common bonds of “history, faith and culture” between Pakistan and Bangladesh.  “While congratulating him on his new role, lauded his contribution towards socio-economic development of his country and expressed my heartfelt sympathies over the devastating recent floods in Bangladesh,” said PM Sharif after his telephonic conversation with Prof Yunus.