Thaindian News

Dhaka, March 15 (IANS) Experts from various fields have advised Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who embarks on her Beijing visit Wednesday, to “balance” ties with larger neighbours India and China.
One regional power should be a “counterweight”, even a “deterrent” to the other, she was told amid a flurry of discussions on the eve of her visit.

“It appears that Bangladesh’s support to India in the Joint Communique for a permanent seat at the UN Security Council was not comfortable for China because China did not support the council’s reforms in 2004,” said Harun ur Rashid, a former Bangladesh ambassador to the UN.

“Bangladesh needs all the diplomatic skills it can muster to remove whatever concerns China have in this respect,” Rashid said in an article in The Daily Star Monday.

“China can be a counterweight to India, another regional power, in our diplomatic relations,” Ashfaqur Rahman, chairman of Centre for Foreign Affairs Studies, Bangladesh, said at a discussion on Bangladesh-China relationship.

“India now has access to Chittagong and Mangla ports through land, rail and sea routes. Bangladesh needs to have some form of deterrent by giving China access to Bangladesh ports,” he said.

The discussion was organised by the Bangladesh Institute of International Strategic Studies.

Ashfaqur Rahman, also a former ambassador, described China as Bangladesh’s all weather friend.

He called for developing strategic relations with China, encouraging Chinese investment in the proposed deep seaport at Sonadia, constructing an oil-pipeline from Chittagong to Kunming in China and exploiting the potential of Kunming-Myanmar road links.

“Bangladesh’s warm relations with China should not worry India,” New Age newspaper quoted him as saying Monday.

Chinese charge d’ affaires Wang Yu said his country believed in building relations on the basis of trust and equality. He hoped that Sheikh Hasina’s visit to Beijing would take Bangladesh-China relations to a new high.

Centre for Policy Dialogue chairman Rehman Sobhan said China, which was emerging as an economic superpower, could relocate its wealth and investment in the South Asian region, including Bangladesh, and ensure greater access of Bangladesh products to the Chinese market to reduce the $3.5 billion trade gap.