DHAKA: Bangladesh expects to review in brief the ties with Islamabad including the outstanding issues as Pakistani foreign minister Hina Rabbani Khar is set to arrive here on a one-day tour, officials said.
“This will be a brief tour of hers (Khar) in Dhaka while her talks with our foreign minister Dipu Moni could last as high as 45 minutes if her flight schedule remains unchanged,” a senior foreign ministry official familiar with the situation told Gulf news.
She said Khar’s meeting with her counterpart was “certainly expected to review the bilateral issues including the outstanding ones” like sharing of pre-1971 assets and repatriation of stranded Pakistanis and official apology from Islamabad for the 1971 atrocities and current security issues.
But, she said, the two countries currently also have a vibrant economic relation with a Pakistani investment worth $1 billion employing some 10,000 people while Pakistan recently bought a Bangladeshi built ship and wants to procure more.
After talks with Moni the Pakistani foreign minister is for the call on with Prime Minister Shaikh Hasina when she would formally invite her to the D-8 summit in Islamabad.
Khar is to be the first such high profile Pakistani figure to visit Dhaka since the Awami League-led grand alliance assumed office after the December 2008 general elections while a special aircraft is to carry her to Dhaka
Bangladesh’s education and commerce ministers, however, visited Islamabad during the period.
Khar’s Dhaka visit was originally set for October 25 but was postponed to what officials said “unavoidable reasons”.
Bangladesh was the eastern wing of Pakistan until 1971 when it won its independence after a nine-month long Liberation War against Pakistani troops under the then military junta with crucial Indian help.
The incumbent government has been demanding Islamabad’s official apology for the Pakistan troops atrocities during the 1971 Liberation War while repatriation of several million Urdu-speaking people who claim them stranded Pakistanis and sharing of wealth of undivided Pakistan remained to be outstanding issues in bilateral ties.
