A senior Bangladesh Foreign Ministry official reporting to National Security Adviser (NSA) Khalilur Rahman will be on a six-day visit to China to attend the ninth China-South Asia Exposition and the sixth China-South Asia Forum meetings that will be held in Yunan between June 18 and 24.
The visit by Mohammad Shah Alom Khokon, Director General under the office of the NSA and the High Representative on Rohingya Issue, assumes significance in the light of meetings that Khalilur Rahman held with Chinese acting Ambassador in Dhaka, Liu Yuyin, before he flew out to the US, ostensibly on “leave”.
On June 16, Rahman took an Emirates flight (No. EK-587) to Dubai from where he was said to proceed to the US on “leave”. And yet the same government order, issued by the Chief Adviser’s Office on June 15, indicated that this was an “official visit” (from June 16 to 26) for “attending meetings with senior US officials”.
Rahman held an hour-long meeting with Chinese Yuyin at his Tejgaon office on May 16. It could be that Rahman might take a detour to China, using the US visit as a cover.
Interestingly, Bangladesh Army chief General Waker-uz-Zaman is also scheduled to visit China, on the invitation of the People’s Liberation Army top brass, towards the end of June.
Gen Zaman’s visit is aimed at greater defence hardware acquisitions from China, which has traditionally been the principal supplier of weapons and air assets to the Bangladesh Army and the Bangladesh Air Force.
For this reason, the Bangladesh Army’s Directorate of Weaponry and Systems (DWE&S) has been coordinating with other directorates on the visit.
Representatives of the directorates of Infantry, Army Aviation, Artillery, Signals, Ordnance, Engineers, Armoured, Military Operations, Military Operations, Military Intelligence and Military Training have met at least on one occasion at the DWE&S conference room in the third week of May to chalk out the details of Gen Zaman’s visit.
Sources said that the Bangladesh Army chief will meet senior PLA officers and discuss avenues for greater defence cooperation between the two countries.
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Dhaka-based strategic analysts expect China to play a role in the event the Bangladesh Army, with tacit backing from the US, goes ahead with providing logistics and supply support to the Arakan Army in Myanmar’s Rakhine State.
Even as the Mohammad Yunus-led interim regime in general and Khalilur Rahman in particular encountered significant opposition to the proposed “humanitarian corridor”, which was subsequently seemingly abandoned for the controversy it had generated, sources said that there was no scope of backing away from the objective involving the Arakan Army.
