European Union (EU) head of delegation Ambassador Charles Whiteley met new foreign minister Dr Mohammad Hasan Mahmud on Wednesday and had a forward-looking discussion, keeping the January 7 general election issue aside.
Replying to a question, whether he discussed the election issue, the ambassador said: "No because we've made our statements and the election happened and we made our statements on that.
"This is very much a forward-looking discussion about how we build the bricks of a modern relationship with Bangladesh and and that of course involves foreign policy issues," he said.
The EU delegation members, in due course, will meet various ministers responsible for the areas directly relevant to EU’s engagement with the government. However, this discussion was comprehensive and fruitful, encompassing a wide range of topics, Charles Whiteley said.
The EU earlier regretted that all parties could not join the last general elections held on January 7 amid BNP's boycott.
The ambassador said he had a very good first meeting with the foreign minister. “It's great to welcome a foreign minister who knows Europe well.”
The EU envoy said: “Of course, he has very strong connections to Belgium, which is the headquarters of the European Union. He studied there, he knows Europe well and how Europe functions.
“So, we had a very wide-ranging discussion about how we take forward EU, Bangladesh relations and there's a lot on our agenda,” the ambassador said.
He said the EU delegation is going to start negotiating a new partnership and cooperation agreement very soon, which is a very wide-ranging new generation agreement. “We only have one other in South Asia covering all different policy areas of of collaboration.”
Charles Whiteley said: “We also talked of course about the broader global situation. So, what's happening in the Middle East, the Ukraine conflict, the Russian aggression in Ukraine, which is of course a huge priority for the European Union. We also talked about the Rohingya crisis.”
Asked about the future of EU Bangladesh relationship in the next five years, he said the EU wants to see a new step in the relation with Bangladesh which will be driven by the new partnership cooperation agreement.
A partnership and cooperation agreement is a much more political in nature than the existing agreement with Bangladesh, which dates to 2001.
“And that's mainly premised on development cooperation. Of course, development cooperation is still a part of what we do here in Bangladesh,” he said.
“But as you know, we had our first political dialogue a year ago and that covers international affairs as well.”
“And it's important that we have that mature discussion on respective foreign policy, not just about what's important in our immediate bilateral relations, but what's happening in the wider world and how Bangladesh and the European Union can influence things have shared priority,” the envoy added.
“We still have our election expert mission in town as you know they haven't left yet. They will be making a report that will be made public thanks to the agreement with the government of Bangladesh,” Charles Whiteley said.
When asked, whether they will continue support and working with Bangladesh in the next five years whatever the election monitoring report come, he said: "Of course. And we'll work on the recommendations of that report, which, you know, is what we did with our last expert mission."
