Photo: Collected
A senior US State Department official has said Washington does not define its relationship with Bangladesh taking into account Dhaka’s ties with Russia, China or any other country.
‘US-Bangladesh relationship isn’t defined by China, by Russia and any other country,’ US Deputy Assistant Secretary Afreen Akhter told BSS in an interview this week in the capital.
She said that Washington had a broad range of multifaceted, multi-dimensional relationships with Bangladesh and found lots of synergies as Dhaka recently released its Indo-Pacific Outlook (IPO) as many of its elements were common with US Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS).
‘Broadly, we see a lot of synergies between our two documents, our strategy, and your (Bangladesh’s) outlook. We both are focused on building economic prosperity in the region and through infrastructure, through our substantial development projects,’ the senior state department official said.
Bangladesh last month released its IPO envisioning a free, open, peaceful, secure, and inclusive indo-pacific region that appeared as Dhaka’s expression of its cohesion with the IPS which has been pursued by the US in the region.
The State Department official’s comments came months after US Ambassador in Dhaka Peter Haas said Washington does not force countries to choose sides over relations with other countries and particularly with Beijing as ‘we don’t expect every country to have the same exact assessment of China as we do’.
Haas, however, said the Russian actions in Ukraine currently appeared as the ‘most pressing strategic challenge’ for the US vision for an ‘open, interconnected prosperous, secure and resilient Indo-Pacific’.
Akhter pointed out with a note of thanks Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s recent joint statement with Japanese Premier Fumio Kishida ‘condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a violation of an International law and the UN charter’.
‘I just want to say Prime Minister (Sheikh) Hasina’s recent statement on Russia . . . we really welcome it very positively,’ she said.
Source: BSS
TDM/FMT
