Dhaka; 11 December 2019

Deputy Foreign Minister of Belarus Andrei Dapkunas called on Foreign Minister Dr. A. K. Abdul Momen on the latter’s office today. During this meeting, the two ministers discussed various issues of mutual interests ranging from trade and economic cooperation to Rohingya issues and agreed to strengthen the already existing friendly ties.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister expressed gratitude towards the people of Belarus for their support during the War of Liberation in 1971 and appreciated the fact that the relations between the two countries were intensifying gradually through a number of initiatives taken by the two governments.  He underscored the need to exchange more trade and investment delegations and invited Belarusian businessmen and entrepreneurs from Belarus to invest in the Export Processing Zones (EPZs), Special Economic Zones (SEZs) and Hi-Tech Parks (HTP) in Bangladesh. When the Belarusian Deputy Minister informed that Belarus would be the Chair of the Eurasian Economic Commission from 01^st of January 2020 for a year, Bangladesh Foreign Minister requested his government to play a special role in favour of Bangladesh to get duty-free, quota-free facilities to the Eurasian market.

During this meeting, Dr. Momen also discussed the Rohingya situation in details and he requested Mr. Dapkunas to talk to his counterpart of Myanmar and also mentioned that the Belarusian government needs to extend its assistance to ensure safe and dignified repatriation of the forcefully displaced Rohingyas to their homeland Myanmar. Mr. Dapkunas assured that his government would look into the matter positively.