bdnews24.com :
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s international affairs adviser says Bangladesh maintains “outstanding” relations with India and China contrary to the belief that one must be at the cost of the other.
“…. both China and India encourage us, help us to maintain good relations with each other,” Gowher Rizvi said on Saturday while speaking on the proposed BCIM economic corridor.
Centre for East Asia Foundation organised the seminar bringing together representatives of Bangladesh, China, India and Myanmar (BCIM) together.
Rizvi said setting up the BCIM economic corridor (EC) was a “high priority” for Dhaka as “we wish to be a hub of connectivity of the region”.
“….for us the route to our economic prosperity depends on making Bangladesh the hub and centre of connectivity,” he said.
By saying connectivity, he meant connectivity of all forms including shipping “taking advantage of Bangladesh’s proximity to Myanmar, India, China, Nepal and Bhutan”.
“We remained enthusiastic, we remained committed (to BCIM),” he said, urging all four nations to work together to make the economic corridor happen.
“We want to maximise the enormous resources that nature has endowed us. This is only possible when we co-operate,” he said.
Charge d’ Affaires of the Chinese Embassy Qu Guangzhou, and Myanmar ambassador Myo Myint Than spoke the seminar chaired by Prof Sukomal Barua of Dhaka University.
Japanese ambassador in Dhaka and Defense Attaché of the Indian High Commission in Dhaka were also present.
The concept of BCIM was floated by think-tanks from four countries in 1999.
After nearly 15 years of Track II level discussion, China and India ultimately agreed to build the economic corridor during Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s visit to India in May last year. Bangladesh immediately announced its support.
Bangladesh will host the second joint working group meeting in the next month in Cox’s Bazar.
Adviser Rizvi said in the case of Bangladesh “we have managed to develop extremely cordial relations and preserve it (with India and China) because our vision is very clear”.
“We are peaceful country. We do not want to be embroiled in global conflicts. We do not wish to be embroiled in power politics,” he said, adding that Bangladesh’s foreign policy was based on ‘friendship to all, malice to none’.
“That is a reality”.
“Our people need a secure and a prosperous future and our foreign policy is for achieving that goal. Our neighbours understand both our strengths and our vulnerabilities,” he said.
“We are exceptionally positioned.”
He said Sheikh Hasina’s government is to make Bangladesh “a centre a hub of connectivity between South Asia and South East Asia”.
Rizvi said Bangladesh has “outstanding relations” with the West.
“With US, Bangladesh has very deep, broad-based engagement in a whole range of military, economic, political, environment, security, and intelligence sharing relations.
“We are privileged to have good relation with the EU.
“Our largest expatriate population are working in West Asia and they all are contributing to the welfare and prosperity of Bangladesh,” he said.
He also mentioned relations with Japan that reached a new level after the visits of the two Prime Ministers.
“Belatedly we have begun to look nearer home and have begun to look east,” he said, adding that that has opened up “unprecedented opportunities” which have been difficult to imagine few years ago.
He said BCIM was “a very important part” of Bangladesh’s effort to be a hub of the connectivity.
Charge d’ Affaires of the Chinese Embassy Guangzhou said BCIM deserves “all-out efforts” of all four nations to make it happen, given the significance of the economic corridor.
“The BCIM-EC is a long-term systematic project that cannot be completed overnight. It could only be done in a step-by-step manner,” he said while sharing China’s thoughts to make it happen.
Myanmar ambassador Than identified some priority areas of BCIM that he said needed to be focused.
Those are: connectivity, energy, investment and finance, trade in goods, services and trade facilitation, social and human capacity development, poverty alleviation, sustainable development and people to people contact.
