India wants to take its relationship with Bangladesh forward on a positive, constructive and forward-looking path, and is ready to discuss all bilateral issues within the institutional mechanisms that already exist between the two countries, the spokesman for India’s external affairs ministry, Randhir Jaiswal, has said.
He set out the position in response to several questions on Bangladesh-India relations at the ministry’s regular briefing in New Delhi on Tuesday (September 22).
Jaiswal said India’s position on the direction of relations with Bangladesh has been made clear before. India has always wanted a positive, constructive and forward-looking relationship with Bangladesh, and is ready to discuss every kind of bilateral issue within the existing institutional mechanisms between the two countries.
That is India’s attitude, he said: India wants the direction of the relationship to be positive, constructive and forward-looking.
Delhi’s remarks come as the appointment of Bangladesh’s foreign secretary, Asad Alam Siam, as the new high commissioner in New Delhi is under discussion. High-level contact between the two countries has also increased recently.
India’s high commissioner, Dinesh Trivedi, has met Prime Minister Tarique Rahman and other senior government figures in Bangladesh. Those talks focused on taking the relationship forward positively and constructively.
At the briefing Jaiswal was asked whether Asad Alam Siam’s possible appointment could be seen as a sign that relations were returning to normal.
He did not answer directly but restated India’s overall position. The questions then turned to the Bangladesh Air Force’s participation in Tarang Shakti, a multinational air exercise hosted by India, in which Bangladesh is to take part with a C-130J transport aircraft. Asked whether this too signalled a positive change in relations, Jaiswal again spoke of India’s wish for a positive, constructive and forward-looking relationship.
Discussion has also resumed about a possible visit to India by Prime Minister Tarique Rahman. Asked whether the conditions Bangladesh had earlier attached to such a visit had been dropped in the new talks, Jaiswal said that anything to be said on the matter would be announced later.
Prime Minister Tarique Rahman is currently in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, where he is due to meet Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, on the sidelines. Asked whether he might meet India’s external affairs minister, S Jaishankar, Jaiswal said he had no information on that yet.
One thing is clear from Delhi’s recent remarks, however: India is signalling publicly that it wants to take relations with Bangladesh forward through dialogue rather than confrontation. In August too Jaiswal said India wanted a positive, constructive and forward-looking relationship with Bangladesh. The two countries have several sensitive issues between them, including the border, trade, water, security, extradition and the movement of people, so attention will now turn to how much real progress Delhi’s stated readiness for fresh talks produces.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report