The Indian Foreign Minister Mr. Pranab Mukherjee completed a one day visit on February 9th to Bangladesh as an Envoy of Prime Minister Manmohon Singh. He met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, held official talks with the Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni and met a few other senior Ministers of the Bangladesh Government.
Two agreements were signed during the visit. The first was the Agreement on Investment Promotion and Protection and the other the Bilateral Trade Agreement. The first one was a new agreement and the second one was a renewal of an agreement that the two sides had signed earlier. At the official talks, the Bangladesh Foreign Minister and his the Indian counterpart went over a whole range of bilateral issues such as security, border management, strengthening connectivity ; trade and investment and water sharing issues.
No joint statement was issued after the talks. The two Foreign Ministers held separate press conferences. In his press conference, the Indian Foreign Minster did not respond positively on Sheikh Hasina’s call for a Joint task Force to Combat Terrorism. He said that political will, sincerity were more important than setting up any task force. The issue was again raised by Sheikh Hasina when the Indian FM called on her at her official residence. The Prime Minister’s Press Secretary, after the meeting, told reporters that the India FM agreed with the proposal that contradicted what Mr. Mukherjee himself told journalists earlier after his talks with Dipu Moni. In her own press conference, the Bangladesh Foreign Minister faced difficulty and tricky questions related to security and involving Pakistan. An Indian journalist queried her about Bangladesh being used by Pakistan as a “buffer state” for importing terrorists against India to which the Bangladesh Foreign Minister was unable to respond in a way to defend Bangladesh’s case that raised quite a few eyebrows from the Bangladeshi journalists present.
Prior to the visit, the Bangladesh media was full of speculation about issues such as trade and transit, both controversial where relations have remained stagnated. At least two Bangladesh ministers had contradicted on Government position on the issue of transit. The Minister for Commerce and the State Minister for Foreign Affairs were involved in contradicting each other.
The Indian Foreign Minister who arrived in a special aircraft was given protocol given to a visiting Head of State/Government as he was received in the VVIP terminal at Dhaka airport. An explanation given by the Government said that as Mr. Pranab Mukherjee is looking after some of the responsibilities of his Prime Minister, this special gesture was made to him. The Indian FM’s trip was just for a day and was very hectic. He also visited Dhaka University for a ceremony in connection with a floor being built in Dhaka University’s Arts Building with Indian assistance for the Drama Department. Mr. Mukherjee, however, could not find time to meet Begum Khaleda Zia, the leader of the Opposition.
Going by the media hype in Bangladesh, the visit of the Indian Foreign Minister was quite an anti-climax. The tough issues were glanced through without any decisions to move relations ahead. Given Indian concern on terrorism, one expected some agreement on the proposal of Sheikh Hasina on the joint task force. This did not happen. One can surmise that the Indians are not clear whether the Bangladesh Prime Minister was proposing a South Asian initiative or a bilateral one and hence the lack of interest. Given the well known Indian mindset that one has seen over the years, India is never forthcoming on any initiative on controversial issues that are multilateral, always preferring the bilateral approach. The issues of water sharing between Bangladesh and India is a case in point where India has stubbornly refused to bring Nepal into negotiations , despite the fact that with Nepal, this region could just not solve its problem of shortage of water in the dry season but also flood in the rainy season.
The Bangladesh side also showed during the visit that it has no clear sense of direction about dealing with India. The team work is just not there and there are still too many people at government level talking about the issues in a manner that just not shows a lack of professionalism but to add a cliché; here are too many cooks making the broth. In an age of globalization, foreign affairs need much more professional handling. Knowing that India is going to have an election very soon, the Foreign Ministry should not have allowed the media hype by killing all the speculations and instead should have advised the media to see the visit as a goodwill visit and nothing more. The Indians have done just that.
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