EAM meets Bangladesh counterpart, discusses ties

External affairs minister S Jaishankar met his Bangladeshi counterpart Touhid Hossain on the margins of a conference in Oman on Sunday and discussed bilateral relations against the backdrop of a sharp downturn in relations between the two sides.

- Rezaul H Laskar

NEW DELHI: External affairs minister S Jaishankar met his Bangladeshi counterpart Touhid Hossain on the margins of a conference in Oman on Sunday and discussed bilateral relations against the backdrop of a sharp downturn in relations between the two sides.

The meeting between the two leaders, who were attending the Indian Ocean Conference in Muscat, marked the first high-level contact between the two sides since foreign secretary Vikram Misri's visit to Dhaka last December, and came ahead of planned talks between the border guard forces of India and Bangladesh in New Delhi this week. "Met Foreign Affairs Adviser Md Touhid Hossain of the Interim Government of Bangladesh. Conversation was focused on our bilateral relationship, as also on BIMSTEC," Jaishankar said in a post on X.