U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, center, walks outside the hotel during a break from a bilateral meeting with Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif for a new round of Nuclear Talks, in Lausanne, Switzerland on Thursday, March 19.
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US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived here on Monday on a day-long visit to hold talks with the top Bangladeshi leadership on key issues like security and terrorism amid a series of brutal attacks on minorities in the Muslim-majority nation.
Talks between the two countries have intensified in recent months, the USA official said, with the United States engaging with Bangladesh police and the military charged with tackling extremists.
U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, is received by Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina at the Prime Ministers office in Dhaka, Bangladesh, Monday, Aug. 29, 2016.
Kerry is expected to meet opposition leaders who argue the government has used the extremist threat to crack down on political opponents.
Kerry however defended Hasina’s administration against accusations that it is in denial about the nature of the extremist threat it faces.
US Assistant Secretary of State for South Asia Nisha Desai Biswal and Ambassador in Dhaka Marcia Bernicat, along with other US officials, accompanied Kerry.
“One of Kerry’s core intentions in Dhaka will simply be to emphasise the importance that the USA accords to security problems in Bangladesh, and Washington’s strong desire to help the government there address them”.
“It is important for us to make that statement”, he emphasized during his speech about countering terrorist groups such as ISIS, also referred to as Daesh, and Boko Haram.
“No country is immune from terrorism”, said Kerry.
The top U.S. diplomat said this included allowing workers to form unions and affording them full collective bargaining rights.
Foreign Minister Abul Hassan Mahmood Ali and Prime Minister’s International Affairs Adviser Gowher Rizvi were present at the time.
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He came up with this observation in the comment book at Bangabandhu Memorial Museum at Dhanmondi 32 in Dhaka during his visit here yesterday morning to pay his respects to the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. Bangladesh’s economy depends heavily on the fortunes of the $28 billion garment industry, which is struggling to improve a poor safety record epitomized by the Rana Plaza disaster of 2013 in which a factory collapse killed more than 1,100 people.
