 "'Bangladesh, make up your mind what kind of ties you want with India’")
Bangladesh must decide what sort of relationship it wants with India, said External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar on Sunday. He also strongly condemned remarks made by the interim administration against New Delhi.
Jaishankar, speaking days after visiting Bangladesh foreign minister Touhid Hossain in Muscat, called out the interim administration in Dhaka for making harsh remarks against New Delhi.
“We have a long and special history with Bangladesh going back to 1971. Things happened there last year [Sheikh Hasina’s ouster]. But what is very troubling for India is the spate of attacks on the minorities … obviously, it is something which impacts our thinking and we have to speak up about it, which we have done. The second is, they have their politics - you can agree, you can disagree… but at the end of the day, we are their neighbour, they have to make up their mind what kind of relationship they want with us (India),” Jaishankar said.
He stated that Dhaka cannot be disingenuous about its posture towards India.
“If every day someone in the interim government stands up and blames India for everything, some of those things if you look at the reports, are absolutely ridiculous. You cannot, on the one hand, say I would now like to have good relations with you, but I get up every morning and blame you for everything that goes wrong. It is also a decision that they have to make,” the minister said.
He said that the Narendra Modi administration has issued a clear signal that it wants things to settle down in Bangladesh, but he does not like the messaging from the nation, which is always antagonistic to India.
Jaishankar told Touhid Hossain, the interim government’s foreign affairs advisor, during a recent meeting in Muscat that Bangladesh “should not normalise terrorism”.
Following the fall of previous Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Bangladesh is now managed by Chief Advisor Muhammad Yunus, who is aided by a team of experts.
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