Staff Reporter :
Bangladesh and the US will hold the eighth round of “Partnership Dialogue” today amid growing strains in bilateral relations following the US sanctions on RAB and for not inviting Bangladesh in President Joe Biden’s Democracy Summit.
Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen and US Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland will lead respected sides during the dialogue to be held at State Guest House Padma in Dhaka in the morning.
Victoria Nuland, the third-ranked official at the US Department of State, arrived Dhaka on Saturday afternoon.
Foreign Secretary Masud Bin Momen welcomed Victoria Nuland at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 05:10pm, said an official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Nuland will meet Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen during her visit.
She arrived in the capital as part of her tri-nation visit to South Asia. Nuland will be visiting India and Sri Lanka where she sees US partnerships are vital to strengthening peace, prosperity, and security throughout the Indo-Pacific region.
During her March 19-23 visit to Bangladesh, India, and Sri Lanka with an interagency delegation, Nuland will underscore US commitment to, and cooperation with, Indo-Pacific partners, according to the US Department of State.
Besides, the “Partnership Dialogue” between Bangladesh and the US will cover overall Dhaka-Washington bilateral relationships, including political, security and economic cooperation, labour, human rights and governance, climate change and security cooperation, diplomatic sources said.
A foreign ministry official familiar with the partnership dialogue said that Dhaka would raise the RAB’s sanction issue at the dialogue strongly and describe the force’s success in curbing terrorism and drug trafficking.
He said Dhaka would also present evidences that the government took a number of actions against some individuals of RAB whenever it received complaints of human rights violations.
Earlier, the US embassy in Dhaka, US state department and Bangladesh foreign ministry worked together to set the dialogue agenda.
The dialogue is coinciding with the 50th year of Bangladesh-US bilateral relations.
“In this 50th year of our diplomatic relations, the United States seeks to deepen a strong multi-faceted relationships built on mutual respect and shared interest,” an US diplomat stationed in Dhaka recently said.
He made the comments in a briefing with a small group of journalists at the American Centre in Dhaka.
The seventh Bangladesh-US partnership dialogue was held in 2019 when the US had pledged that it would provide additional security assistance for Bangladesh to increase maritime domain awareness, piracy, and regional security coordination in the Bay of Bengal.
The two countries have drawn up a series of engagements in coming months as part of which the US secretary of state Antony J Blinken invited Bangladesh foreign minister AK Abdul Momen to Washington to mark the 50-year anniversary of bilateral ties on April 4.
Officials said the Bangladesh-US partnership dialogue was sort of ‘umbrella’ platform while it is set to be followed by a second-round high-level bilateral economic consultation and an eighth security dialogue in Washington DC in coming months.
