Pakistan’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar arrived in Dhaka on Saturday for a two-day official visit. He landed at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport on a special flight, where he was received by Bangladesh’s Foreign Secretary Asad Alam Siam.
This marks the third visit by a Pakistani cabinet member to Bangladesh since the fall of the Awami League government and the subsequent political changes.
Earlier in July, Pakistan’s Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi visited Dhaka, followed by Commerce Minister Jam Kamal Khan last Wednesday.
During his stay, Ishaq Dar is scheduled to meet Bangladesh’s Chief Adviser of the interim government, Nobel laureate Professor Muhammad Yunus, Foreign Affairs Adviser Md. Touhid Hossain, and several other key political leaders.
According to officials at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Dar will hold both one-on-one and delegation-level talks with Adviser Touhid Hossain on Sunday morning. The meeting is expected to last nearly two hours, after which six agreements and Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) are set to be finalized and signed between the two countries.
The agreements include a deal on visa exemption for holders of official and diplomatic passports. The MoUs cover cooperation in areas such as: formation of a joint working group on trade, cultural exchanges, collaboration between the foreign service academies of both countries, partnership between the two state-run news agencies, and institutional cooperation between the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies (BIISS) and Pakistan’s Islamabad Policy Research Institute (IPRI).
Diplomatic sources have indicated that the Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister will also exchange views with major political parties in Bangladesh. As part of his engagements, he is scheduled to visit BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia at her Gulshan residence and meet with senior leaders of Jamaat-e-Islami.
