A former adviser to a caretaker government on Saturday said the country’s politicians lack a clear understanding what to expect from India and how to approach the neighbour.
“None of our political parties have any firm idea to tell them [India] what exactly we want,” Dr Akbar Ali Khan said at a discussion at the capital’s Jatiya Press Club.
Newly formed socio-political organisation Forum 71 organised the discussion honouring former state minister for information Prof Abu Sayeed’s achievement of a PhD degree.
Dr Akbar further said political parties have to agree unilaterally on core issues related to the state interest for the foreign policy to be successful.
“In the US, there are core issues related to their state interest, on which, both the republicans and democrats put similar kind of opinion. They call such agreement as ‘bipartisan’,” he said addressing the audience.
“In Bangladesh, we need such bipartisan opinions from all the political parties,” he added.
Speaking on the topic of his PhD “Independence of Bangladesh: War of diplomacy”, Prof Abu Sayeed said the country’s foreign policy was “to create friends, not enemies”.
“But it seems that the country lacked true friends at present,” he added.
