Bangladesh wants strong people-to-people ties with India: Foreign Affairs Adviser

Dhaka, Sep 02: Bangladesh’s Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain on Monday said the interim government wants to see strong people-to-people ties with India, suggesting that this was lacking during the previous Sheikh Hasina regime.

“It’s possible to ease public dissatisfaction towards India. I believe we need to take correct bilateral steps to address this,” Hossain told reporters here.

He said that while the ‘golden chapter’ of Bangladesh-India relations was apparent at the governmental level, it has not extended to the general public, the state-owned BSS news agency reported.

“We want to see strong people-to-people ties. The public should feel that there is a genuinely good relationship between Bangladesh and India, but unfortunately, this aspect has been lacking,” he said.

He criticised the Indian media for creating exaggerated narratives after the student-people revolution.

On regional cooperation, Hossain said there was a hope that the Bay of Bengal Initiative for Multi-Sectoral Technical and Economic Cooperation (BIMSTEC) could serve as an alternative to the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

However, he pointed out that BIMSTEC cannot become fully effective until peace is restored in Myanmar. He emphasised that Bangladesh does not currently want to see BIMSTEC as a replacement for SAARC.

Hossain noted that Chief Adviser Muhammad Yunus is keen on revitalizing SAARC as a regional forum. The SAARC has not been very effective since 2016, as its biennial summits have not taken place since the last one in Kathmandu in 2014.

The 2016 SAARC Summit was to be held in Islamabad. But after the terrorist attack on an Indian Army camp in Uri in Jammu and Kashmir on September 18 that year, India expressed its inability to participate in the summit due to “prevailing circumstances”.

The summit was called off after Bangladesh, Bhutan and Afghanistan also declined to participate in the Islamabad meet.

The regional grouping comprises Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.