A “propitious environment” is required for Bangladesh Prime Minister Tarique Rahman to visit India, the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry said on Sunday, noting that the atmosphere of bilateral ties has been “vitiated” by its deposed PM Sheikh Hasina’s antagonistic press conference at a private venue in Delhi earlier this month.
The Bangladesh Ministry’s spokesperson A.K.M. Shahidul Karim urged India to “extradite” Hasina and the suspected killers of radical student leader Osman Hadi before the proposed visit, which has been the subject of talks between officials from New Delhi and Dhaka for “several weeks”.
External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal had reiterated last Friday that New Delhi had extended two invitations to Rahman-one for next month’s BRICS summit and the other for a bilateral visit.
Diplomatic sources had earlier indicated that bilateral talks had been on the right track after India distanced itself from Hasina’s press conference, in which she had targeted Rahman’s government. Subsequently, Indian High Commissioner to Dhaka Dinesh Trivedi called on Rahman on August 10. In view of these exchanges, sources in Dhaka had indicated that “positive movements” had started and that the window for a big-ticket visit from Dhaka was gradually opening.
However, the Foreign Ministry’s latest statement indicates the conditions that Dhaka is putting up ahead of the visit. “We are of the view that a propitious environment needs to be created for the visit. To this end, we have requested the Indian authorities to expeditiously act on our request to extradite Sheikh Hasina and other fugitive criminals, and to hand over to Bangladesh the accused killers of Shaheed Sharif Osman Hadi in compliance with our bilateral extradition treaty,” Karim said in a statement, adding, “We are awaiting their response.”