New Delhi, Dec 8 (IANS) With Prime Minister Manmohan Singh deciding to go to Copenhagen for the UN climate conference, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India has been postponed to the second week of January.
“Dates are being finalised. The visit will now take place in the second week of January,” official sources said here Tuesday.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dipu Moni had said in Dhaka Monday, “The Bangladesh prime minister’s visit has been rescheduled. Though the fresh date has not yet been finalised, but the tour is expected to take place Jan 10 or 11 next year.”

Hasina was earlier scheduled to visit India Dec 18 to 21. The trip had to be deferred in view of Manmohan Singh’s decision last week to attend the high-level segment of the conference of climate change in Cophenhagen set for Dec 18.

Dhaka has set a positive tone for the first visit by Sheikh Hasina to India after she won the elections in December last year by arresting top insurgent leaders and handing them over to India.

In a major confidence-building measure, the Bangladeshi authorities last week “pushed back” one of India’s most wanted fugitives, Arabinda Rajkhowa, chairman of the outlawed United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), the outfit’s deputy commander-in-chief Raju Baruah, and Rajkhowa’s personal security guard Raja Bora along with their family members through the Indo-Bangla border at Dawki in the northeastern state of Meghalaya.

The visit would signal a warming of relations between the two neighbours whose ties suffered under the previous Khaleda Zia regime in Dhaka over a host of issues, including the alleged sheltering of insurgent leaders by Dhaka.

The two sides are set to discuss important issues like sharing of waters of the common rivers, including Teesta, connectivity, increase of trade and commerce, mutual cooperation in power and energy and security related matters would dominate the forthcoming meeting of the two premiers, Moni said in Dhaka.

Ahead of the visit, the home secretaries of the two countries finalised three crucial accords in the area of counter-terrorism and security cooperation which will be signed during the visit of Sheikh Hasina.