Foreign Minister Abdul Momen held separate bilateral meetings with his Indian and Chinese counterparts, on the sideline of an connectivity conference in Uzbekistan, highlighting necessity of early Rohingya repatriation as well as corona vaccine cooperation.
The foreign minister is leading a delegation comprised of Bangladesh ambassador to Uzbekistan and senior officials from Dhaka to the International Conference on “Central and South Asia: Regional connectivity: Challenges and opportunities” currently being held in Tashkent on Thursday.
Apart from meeting with his Indian and Chinese counterpart, Dr Momen also held a bilateral meet with Tajikistan foreign minister on the sideline of the conference, a foreign ministry press release.
Dr Momen and Indian external affairs minister Dr Jaishankar discussed a range of issues including the bilateral and regional connectivity, Covid and vaccination situation in both the countries and the issue of repatriation of forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals from Bangladesh to homeland.
The Indian foreign minister expressed his happiness as the supply of vaccination to Bangladesh is back in track again from diversified external sources including under Covax arrangement.
Both the sides reaffirmed their commitment to further strengthening the partnership and expanding multifaceted cooperation. They also emphasized the need for resuming the activities of various joint mechanisms soon after the COVID scenario in both countries improves.
After meeting with Jaishankar, Dr Momen held the bilateral meet with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi where he reiterated his request to initiate vaccine coproduction in Bangladesh with partnership between Bangladeshi and Chinese stakeholders.
He thanked the Chinese government for initiating the six-party COVID consultation and expressed Bangladesh’s gratitude to the Chinese Government for standing by the people of Bangladesh at an extremely difficult time by generosity sending vaccine doses as gifts and also opening the commercial supply line.
