The fourth Bangladesh-US Security Dialogue is going to be held next month in Washington to discuss strategic priorities.
“We had an inter-ministerial meeting on preliminary dialogue today (Sunday) on Bangladesh’s position on different strategic security issues,” said a senior Foreign Ministry official.
The meeting is scheduled to be held in the second week of September, preferably September 11.
In the last three meetings both the countries have discussed strategic priorities, regional issues, military-military engagement and security assistance issues in details and this time there would not be any exception, he said.
Washington has huge interest in the region and it has been expanding its relationship with Bangladesh for the last 10 years.
According to a report of the State Department, it said: “Military-to-military engagement between US and Bangladeshi armed forces has expanded rapidly, especially since US Marines participated in relief efforts after the devastating cyclone in November 2007.”
Bangladesh has also requested a possible sale of 4 Lockheed Martin C-130E US Air Force baseline aircraft and 20 T56AA Rolls-Royce engines as grant under Excess Defence Articles (EDA).
The estimated cost of the equipment is $180 million.
The first security dialogue was held in Dhaka in 2011 to have a formal platform to discuss security related issues between the countries.
Bangladesh also has similar arrangement in different format with India.
When contacted, Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque told the Dhaka Tribune that security and non-security issues would be discussed in the dialogue.
“We have had the dialogue every year for the last three years and there would be stalk-taking of all the issues,” he said.
In the previous dialogues, both the countries discussed about their relationship with India, Afghanistan, Myanmar and Indian Ocean region under the regional issue agenda.
Under the military-military engagement agenda, they discussed potential cooperation in intelligence sharing, surveillance and reconnaissance and civil-military relationships.
Defence trade, excess defence articles programme, and military education and training were discussed in the previous dialogues.
Washington has provided more than $2.5 million in International military education and training and other military funding to Dhaka.
Regional counter-terrorism cooperation and countering violent extremism were also in the agenda in the last three dialogues.