Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Thursday said Bangladesh wants to strengthen its capacity to resist any external attack, not to engage in any war with anyone.
“We don’t want to fight with anyone…but if Bangladesh is ever attacked by any external foes, we want to attain the capability to resist it,” she said. The Prime Minister said this while commissioning five modern warships of Bangladesh Navy at the Naval Berth-1 in Chattogram.
She said the Father of the Nation had formulated Bangladesh’s foreign policy that ‘Friendship to all, Malice to none’. “We believe in that policy.”
Sheikh Hasina commissioned the five Bangladesh Navy Ships (BNS) through a videoconference from her official residence Ganabhaban in the capital. The five ships are BNS Umar Farooq, BNS Abu Ubaidah, BNS Prottasha, BNS Darshak and BNS Tallashi.
Chief of Naval Staff Admiral M Shaheen Iqbal, on behalf of the Prime Minister, formally handed over the “commissioning forman [statement]” of the ships to their respective captains at the Naval Berth.
An audio-visual presentation was made in the five ships that included two frigates — Umar Farooq and Abu Ubaidah–, one corvette –Prottasha—and two survey ships –Darshak and Tallashi. Of these, two survey ships were built at Khulna Shipyard.
The captains of the five ships — Captain AM Shamsul Haque of Prottasha, Captain Gazi Golam Morshed of Umar Farooq, Captain Ashrafuzzaman of Abu Ubaidah, Lt Commander Kamrul Ahsan of Tallashi and Lt Commander Nazmus Sakib Sourav — received the Commissioning Forman [statement].
