Pakistan has asked a Bangladeshi diplomat to leave the country in retaliation to the expulsion of a Pakistani diplomat from Dhaka last month.
The Bangladeshi diplomat, Mausumi Rahman, who is political counsellor and the head of chancery in Islamabad, has been given until tomorrow to leave Pakistan.
A senior official at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Bangladeshi High Commissioner to Pakistan Sohrab Hosain went to the Pakistan Foreign Ministry yesterday afternoon as he was summoned there by the ministry and met its Saarc and South Asia Director General Mohammad Faisal there.
Faisal verbally conveyed the message about the withdrawal of Mausumi from the mission, the official said.
Another senior ministry official said Mausumi has been transferred to Portugal.
“When we asked the Pakistani diplomat to leave Bangladesh, we anticipated that there would be a retaliation and we worked out her next posting in December,” he said. “She did well in Pakistan, which is why she was given a good posting.”
The bilateral relationship between Bangladesh and Pakistan has reached its low in the recent period.
In the third week of December, Bangladesh informally asked Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka to withdraw its diplomat Faeena Arshad, who went back to Pakistan on December 23. Faeena Arshad was put under observation by different intelligence agencies for past one year. She worked in Bangladesh for almost three years.
