UNB, Dhaka :Being a country of 160 million people, Bangladesh has no option but to have a stable political environment to achieve its goal to become a middle-income country by 2021, said France Ambassador to Bangladesh Sophie Aubert.”It’s better for your interest to have a stable environment. To achieve the middle-income status by 2021, the best way is to have a peaceful environment. That’s very clear,” she said in an interview with UNB at its office.Terming it a ‘big country’, Ambassador Aubert mentioned that people do not want to consider Bangladesh as a place of instability.She is confident that the solution to the ongoing political tensions in Bangladesh, which seems to be improving, will come within Bangladesh through its people. “The situation is improving. People want to go to work and children want to go to school. Life is coming back. I hope it is a positive normality, it should not be seen as negative normality for the future, she added, meaning people getting used to constraints.”Aubert, who started her career as a diplomat back in 1995, finds Bangladesh as a very resilient country and said it has resources to project the future as a stable, peaceful and a developed country.About freedom of expression, the French envoy said, “What I can say is that it is unacceptable to see young people being killed because they express their opinions. The killings that we have seen happening here is unacceptable.”The envoy, who arrived in Bangladesh in mid-November 2014, thinks it is a ‘bad signal’ for freedom of expression, not only in Bangladesh but also all over the world.Describing France’s engagement with Bangladesh in various areas, the diplomat said she would not completely agree that things remain unrecognised. “We are connected in so many ways.”She talked about strengthening bilateral relations between the two countries. “We have a lot to do to strengthen our relations. I’m optimistic about our relations.”The French envoy admitted the current imbalance in terms of trade relations. “We’re closely working here to have a better trade balance. We’ve many opportunities to identify where French products can meet Bangladeshi interest.”Aubert expressed interest in working together on some security and defence issues. “We know each other. Our two armies can find many places of common interest. We want to improve our presence here through French equipment fitting Bangladeshi needs, exchange visits of officers of the National Defence College and our French Institute working on the same programmes.”She said, civil aviation, consumption, food, agriculture, high technology, water, road transportation, energy and other issues can be the areas of further cooperation. “We can find some ways to work together in these areas.”On cultural cooperation, the Ambassador said this is one of her priority areas where France will continue to work. The two “Alliances françaises”, in Dhaka and Chittagong, have always been strong and famous cultural institutions in Bangladesh. “They are the core of our cultural presence here.”She also talked about cooperation in the areas of oceanography, climate change and blue economy. “Our scientists come here every year. We have Bangladeshi students in our scientific institutes. This is a field where we’ll boost our relationship and invest more in this cooperation.”Aubert mentioned that climate change is essential for Bangladesh and France, not only because of the International conference on climate change due to take place in Paris in December 2015, but also because the world is at a turning point on this issue and the world has to be responsible, on behalf of the next generations.On high-level visits to demonstrate that the ties are deeper and stronger, she said, “We’ve started discussing exchange of visits at DG level between the ministries of Foreign Affairs.”In Bangladesh, she thinks, she has a large scope for developing bilateral relations, even if France and Bangladesh have always had strong cultural links.Bangladesh and France share deeper ties. But it seems that the depth of the relationship is not described well.However, the Ambassador does not fully agree that the depth of the relationship goes unrecognised. “My feeling is that our two countries are not geographically too close but we have many common stories….I would not say it (our relations) is stopped but something is missing and we can do much more together,” the diplomat said.
