Hope Mamata will see larger picture on Teesta: Bangladesh envoy

Tariq Karim has been Bangladesh’s envoy to India for the past five years, as a political appointee, and has steered the important agreement drafts of the Land Border Agreement and Teesta River water arrangement. Returning from Dhaka, where he had been a part of the bilateral negotiations between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and the Bangladesh Foreign Minister A.H. Mahmood Ali and Prime Minister Hasina he spoke to The Hindu’s Diplomatic Editor Suhasini Haidar about the urgency of clearing the agreement in the next three months. Excerpts.

The MEA describes External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Dhaka as “productive and successful”. How would you describe it?

I speak for the Foreign Minister and the government when I say the visit was excellent, which served to reassure us that India was going to stand by its commitments, and that the assurances that India is in the process of getting consensus in the federal structure, we accepted that at face value. These are early days for the government, we have waited three years, we can wait another three or four months.

When you say three-four months, have you been given a commitment on the time?

I say three-four months because in my mind there is a timeline, because if you let it drag on for too long, the internal politics and dynamics in Bangladesh will make it more and more difficult to accept at face-value the reassurances from India. It’s neither in our interest nor in India’s in terms of the bold signals that the new PM has given out that regional cooperation will be the mainstay of how they want to go ahead. It will become more difficult for India. And getting the India-Bangladesh relationship right will be the key to opening a lot of locks in the region.

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