State Minister for Foreign Affairs Shahriar Alam said a British delegation had expressed surprise over a recent comment by BNP leader Tarique Zia contending that his father, Ziaur Rahman, was the first president of Bangladesh.
“I raised the issue and asked them where Tarique Zia, who is now living in England, got such information after 43 years and what they thought about it,” Shahriar Alam said after meeting with a delegation led by Alan Duncan, UK minister for international development, at the foreign ministry in Dhaka yesterday.
“They told me that they were surprised to hear that. They were smiling when they said so. They did not have any explanation as to why a political party gave such distorted information. They were very surprised,” Shahriar said.
About bringing Tarique back to Bangladesh, the state minister said there was a procedure to do that.
Shahriar said the foreign ministry could only act when there was a warrant, but no warrant was issued against Tarique yet. “When a warrant is issued, the foreign ministry will act upon request from the home ministry,” he said.
The British minister, however, did not make any comments after the meeting.
Duncan arrived in the city on a three-day trip on Monday. He is scheduled to visit the Rana Plaza disaster site at Savar today, and will address a press conference later.
Tarique, son of former president Ziaur Rahman and former three-time prime minister Khaleda Zia, at a seminar marking Bangladesh’s Independence Day in London last month, remarked that Zia, a sector commander in 1971, was the country’s first president.
Khaleda Zia later endorsed his view, publicly saying her late husband was indeed Bangladesh’s first president.