Bangladesh’s ‘no foe’ diplomacy grows ties with Pakistan

DHAKA: Recent contacts between Pakistani and Bangladeshi leaders have provided a rare glimpse of a possible, if not yet probable, detente after years of strained ties between the two countries, according to observers, foreign media reported.

Since the independence of Bangladesh [then East Pakistan] from Pakistan in December 1971 following a nine-month bloody war, the relationship between the two South Asian Muslim states have passed critical courses with ups and downs.

In recent years, already icy relations between the two were fueled by the conviction of several Jamaat-e-Islami, and main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party leaders by a controversial local tribunal — called the International Crimes Tribunal — and subsequent executions on accusations of committing atrocities during the 1971 War of Independence.

Bilateral ties, however, have seemingly improved as Dhaka follows its constitutional “friendship to all and malice to none” diplomacy with Islamabad in recent weeks.

“For the greater interest of our country we will keep relations with all and our constitutional foreign policy is- friendship to all and malice to none,” Bangladeshi Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen told Anadolu Agency.

After a courtesy meeting between Momen and Pakistani High Commissioner in Dhaka Imran Ahmed Siddiqui earlier this month, and Pakistani Prime Minister Imran Khan’s telephone call to Bangladeshi counterpart Sheikh Hasina, India’s English daily the Hindu

published a article underlining Dhaka’s “growing intimacy with Pakistan and China.”

It wrote the number of advisors sympathetic to Pakistan has increased in Hasina’s government. As a result, advisors keeping close ties with India have lost importance in the government.

Dhaka’s top diplomat, however, dubbed the reports as “mere propaganda,” saying as a sovereign and independent country, Bangladesh would decide “freely to whom it keep relations and to what level.”

Terming the reports “excesses,” Momen added, “They have done a bad thing. Bangladesh is an independent and sovereign country. Why others will dictate to us on our internal affairs?”

Also, he saw Indian media reports about Bangladesh-Pakistan ties as “production of weak minds.”

“Those who are afraid of our friendship to all are mentally weak. Their situation is like - A guilty mind is always suspicious, “ he said.

“Every country sets its foreign diplomacy based on its own interest. In diplomacy, no one is permanent friend and permanent enemy,” Momen said, adding “no country or its people or its media should do anything that may create an adverse impact over the bilateral ties between two states.”

“Bangladesh believes in friendship to all, malice to none,” he also underlined.

However, the top diplomat went on to say that the expectation of all Bangladeshis is that the Pakistan government should “express apology for crime and genocide committed in 1971 in Bangladesh to start a meaningful and normal relationship.”

Pakistan’s foreign ministry spokeswoman, Aisha Farooqui, said her country “has a keen desire to see bilateral relations and peoples’ relations with Bangladesh improve and strengthen.”

“We have a very strong historical connection and we want to have cooperative relations between us,” Farooqui told Anadolu Agency

“As founding members of SAARC [South Asian Association of Regional Cooperation] and for the mutual objective of forward movement towards economic prosperity and fulfillment of development goals of the people of South Asia we believe both Pakistan and Bangladesh can play an important role to strengthen SAARC processes for regional cooperation,” she maintained