The New Nation - Internet Edition

UNB, Kolkata

Indian Foreign Minister Pranab Mukherjee here yesterday said they were trying to expedite rice shipment to Bangladesh overcoming a few hurdles, including inadequate number of ports having difficulties in handling goods at zero points.

"I hope the problems in this regards will be solved soon," he told a media dialogue at the Council Camber of West Bengal Assembly, replying to a question after inaugurating the dialogue of South Asian Free Media Association (SAFMA).

Bangladesh signed an agreement with India to import 5 lakh tons of rice to meet its emergency food requirement caused by two consecutive floods followed by devastating Cyclone Sidr last year.

The Indian Foreign Minister replied to a volley of questions on bilateral issues Bangladesh suffering from its next-door big neighbour, including the rice shipment and duty-free export of 8 million pieces of Bangladeshi apparel items.

"We've asked authorities to see whether they can arrange another port to solve the problem," he said. "We're also considering whether we can utilise railway to ship the rice at some points inside Bangladesh to avert handling problem at zero points."

The Indian Chapter of SAFMA organised the two-day media conference titled 'West Bengal-Bangladesh Interaction on Building Mutual Confidence' being attended by a 16-member delegation from SAFMA, Bangladesh chapter, led by its general secretary Zahiduzzaman Faruque.

The issues raised by the Bangladesh delegation included water sharing, maritime boundary, poor services on the just-rolled passenger railway, import of hydro-power from Nepal and facilitating export-import through a small corridor with Nepal.

"There are some time-consuming issues, but we've started solving the problems," Pranab said, adding that both sides have agreed to conduct a joint survey in the Bay of Bengal. "I think there could be a breakthrough in this regard in the next meeting."

He said the two countries have been able to make some improvement in the bilateral relations despite bureaucratic bottleneck and mistrust between the two nations. "RMG export took a long time to settle due to bureaucracy."

The Foreign Minister called upon the media from both the countries to play the most important role in creating the right atmosphere through highlighting the bright side as well as the dark one to develop a better relationship between the two countries.

Addressing the function, West Bengal chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee said there is ample scope to improve the relations between Bangladesh and India, as both sides have also huge resources to cooperate with and get benefited out of it.

"If we can consolidate the resources, we can grow faster together," he said, stressing the need for a closer cooperation between the two countries.

SAFMA Bangladesh chapter general secretary Zahiduzzaman said the crisis of mistrust and confidence would deepen further unless the political leadership cannot act right now to solve the problems.