Talks underway for meeting between EAM Jaishankar and Bangladesh foreign affairs advisor

Efforts to schedule a meeting between External Affairs minister S Jaishankar and Bangladesh Foreign Affairs advisor Touhid Hossain are underway. The meeting is expected to take place on the sidelines of the Indian Ocean Conference, which will be held in Oman’s Muscat on February 16-17.

If talks between Jaishankar and Hossain do take place, this will be their second meeting since August 5, when the Sheikh Hasina-led government in Bangladesh collapsed. Their first meeting was in New York, on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly session in September last year.

Jaishankar will be co-chairing the conference — organised by India Foundation and Oman’s Foreign ministry — along with Oman’s Foreign minister Sayyid Badr bin Hamad bin Hamood Albusaidi and Singapore’s Foreign minister Vivian Balakrishnan.

The last diplomatic meeting between India and Bangladesh took place in December last year, when Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri visited Dhaka. Misri met Bangladesh’s foreign secretary Md Jasim Uddin, the country’s interim government’s chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus, and foreign adviser Hossain, among others.

The reports on talks between Jaishankar and Hossain come close on the heels of a mob destroying late Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s residence in Dhaka last week. Rahman was the founding leader of Bangladesh, and the father of ousted prime minister Sheikh Hasina.

India had expressed regret after the incident, strongly condemning the “act of vandalism”.

Both India and Bangladesh had also summoned each other’s acting envoys. Bangladesh lodged a protest with India’s acting envoy, urging New Delhi to stop ousted PM Hasina from making incendiary statements. Meanwhile, India summoned the neighbouring country’s Acting High Commissioner, conveying that such statements made by Bangladesh are “in fact responsible for the persistent negativity”.

Tensions have been simmering between both countries since the fall of the Hasina government on August 5.

Hasina, who was ousted following student-led protests in Bangladesh, has taken refuge in India. New Delhi has not yet responded to the Bangladesh government’s request her extradition.