bdnews24.com: US Secretary of State John Kerry, on his maiden visit to Bangladesh, has met Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Hasina received Kerry when he arrived in her office in Dhaka at 12:10pm on Monday. Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and the prime minister’s International Relation Affairs Adviser Gowher Rizvi were present at the time. Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Nisha Desai Biswal and US Ambassador in Dhaka Marcia Bernicat, along with other US officials, accompanied Kerry. Kerry arrived in Dhaka on Monday morning on a short visit. He will leave for New Delhi in the evening. His visit is the first by any US secretary of state since Hillary Clinton’s trip in 2012. The US Department of State said Kerry’s visit was to highlight the “longstanding and broad based US-Bangladesh relationship”. The aircraft carrying him from Geneva had touched down at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport around 10:10am, where he was received by his Bangladesh counterpart Mahmood Ali. Then Kerry visited the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum at Dhanmondi and paid his respects to the Bangladesh’s founding father Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. After meeting the prime minister, the US secretary of state went to the state guest house ‘Padma’. He was scheduled to have a meeting with Ali there. Before leaving for India, Kerry will also meet the US embassy diplomats and staff at the Chancery and visit a garment factory at Mirpur.
