Times News Network
New Delhi: Bangladesh foreign policy adviser Touhid Hossain said after assuming office Dhaka will maintain a balance in ties with big powers and seek good ties with all. Hossain, who served as foreign secretary from late 2006 to July, 2009, also said the immediate priority for the interim govt that was sworn in on Thursday is to restore law and order and the country.
Hossain is known to have mixed views on India, acknowledging India’s importance for Dhaka on the one hand, but also accusing it of not doing enough to uphold Bangladesh’s interests on the other.
Hossain said last year in a lecture that Bangladesh’s interests were not protected as much as India’s in the past 15 years, a period that saw excellent ties between the govts but not necessarily the people. This was the reason, according to him, the relationship could not be considered a “role model’’. India has maintained for years that the relationship with Bangladesh is a model for bilateral relations not just in the region but also beyond.
Bangladesh’s Prothom Alo newspaper quoted him as saying last year that, according to history, the best combination for relations between the two countries is Awami League in govt in Dhaka and Congress in Delhi. Significantly, Hossain is seen as pro-West and has long maintained that Dhaka needs to mend its ties with the western countries. Just before the elections this year in Bangladesh, he wrote that while ties with India will always remain important, and Dhaka needs to maintain good ties with Russia and China too, “none of these countries can substitute our relations with western countries’’.
In another column earlier this year, Hossain said that by any consideration, the relationship with India is most important for Bangladesh’s foreign policy but added that while Bangladesh had delivered almost everything India asked for, India had displayed indifference and reluctance in meeting Bangladesh’s “few demands’’. To back his argument, he has often cited India’s failure to deliver on the Teesta river water sharing.
“People are still being shot along the border by BSF guards. The excuses made by the Indian govt to exonerate themselves of these killings, simply infuriates the people of Bangladesh further. India is also depriving Bangladesh of its share of the river Teesta’s water on the excuse of their domestic politics,’’ he said in a column in January, adding there were other irritants like non-tariff barriers and India not allowing Bangladesh access to Nepal through the Siliguri Corridor.