Appreciating the Bangladeshi peacekeepers’ role, UN Under-Secretary General Atul Khare on Tuesday said they are keen to have more Bangladesh peacekeepers at policy and commanding level positions and an important announcement in this regard to be made soon.
“We’re very cognizant of this (need for BD people to be appointed to senior positions) and we’re going to have an important announcement soon,” he told a press conference indicating that it wants more Bangladeshi peacekeepers in senior positions in UN peacekeeping missions.
Officer-in-Charge of United Nations Information Centre in Dhaka M Moniruzzaman was also present.
Atul Khare said three Bangladesh peacekeepers are currently holding senior positions like sector commander and deputy force commander. “Even then more can be done to get Bangladeshi people in top positions.”
He said, Bangladeshi peacekeepers are deployed in ‘extremely’ challenging missions and, in fact, it is a great credit to Bangladesh Army. “They’ve been deployed in places which are difficult and insecure. Despite all these challenges Bangladesh troops have performed exceedingly great. I’m very happy with their performance and that’s why I came here to thank Bangladesh leadership and its people for their effective contributions to UN peacekeeping missions,” Atul added.
He highly appreciated Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s role and said he has started working on the ideas to implement those placed by the Prime Minister. “The Prime Minister has made a number of suggestions in the last peacekeeping summit. The suggestions and ideas are extremely useful for the future of UN peacekeeping missions,” said the UN official.
He mentioned that he had decided to start implementing the proposals when he took charge. On appointing more Bangladeshi people in peacekeeping missions, he said they are in discussion over the matter.
“Many of our missions are French-speaking ones. We need people who are very fluent in French and English, both written and spoken. Bangladesh will work on it as I was told,” said the UN official.
Responding to a question, he said they will discuss how Bangladeshi businesspeople can take part in UN procumbent process for the peacekeeping missions through tenders. He also said a conference will be arranged to discuss all these issues on business front.
