DHAKA: Bangladesh and Pakistan on Sunday signed a series of agreements during Pakistani Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar’s visit to Dhaka — the first such high-level engagement in more than a decade.
Dar arrived in Dhaka on Saturday, two days after the visit of Pakistani Commerce Minister Jam Kamal Khan.
He is the most senior Pakistani official to visit Bangladesh since 2012. Pakistan’s government has referred to the trip as historic and a “significant milestone” in relations, which have been growing since a student-led uprising ousted Bangladesh’s former leader, Sheikh Hasina, last year.
After a series of meetings with Bangladesh’s interim administration, Dar and Bangladeshi Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain signed a set of understandings aimed at strengthening trade and diplomatic relations.
“Pakistan is an important neighbor of ours in South Asia. Our relationship with Pakistan is historical and diverse. In this context, at today’s meeting, we expressed a firm determination to advance our existing ties,” Hossain said.
The documents signed on Sunday included an agreement to exempt visa requirements for officials and diplomats, as well as memorandums of understanding on establishing a joint working group on trade, cooperation between foreign service academies and national news agencies, and an institutional partnership between the Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies and the Institute of Strategic Studies Islamabad.
Hossain also confirmed plans to begin direct flights between the two countries, as “two Pakistani airlines got primary approval to operate direct flights.”
While talks “focused on increasing trade and investment,” he said they “agreed to stay close on bilateral and multilateral issues.”
There was no substantive trade or diplomatic engagement between Islamabad and Dhaka for years, largely due to Bangladesh’s war crimes trials related to the 1971 war — which led to the country’s independence from what was then West Pakistan — and because Hasina’s government was hostile toward Islamabad.
She was closely allied with India, where she is exiled. While her removal from office was followed by a cooling of relations between Dhaka and New Delhi, exchanges with Islamabad started to grow.
One of the planned arenas for Bangladesh-Pakistan cooperation on the international stage will be the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation, an intergovernmental organization to promote economic development and regional integration of South Asian countries — Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.
Once envisioned as a South Asian version of the ASEAN, the association has struggled to function effectively in recent years, mainly due to India-Pakistan rivalry.
“We discussed the cooperation in the regional platforms and SAARC. This cooperation will increase further,” Hossain said.
Dar also met the head of Bangladesh’s interim government, Nobel laureate Prof. Muhammad Yunus, to speak about the “revival of old connections between the two countries, promoting youth linkages, enhancing connectivity, and augmenting trade and economic cooperation,” the Pakistani Foreign Office said.
But whether there will be significant cooperation between the former foes is not likely to be decided by the current government, Shomsher Mobin Chowdhury, Bangladesh’s former foreign secretary, told Arab News, as Yunus’s administration is expected to hold general elections in February 2026 and remains cautious in its steps.
“We know that interim government tenures are always short lived. How long will this one last — we do not know. So, Pakistan is showing its eagerness to establish its relations with Bangladesh ... The signal is coming from Pakistan, and we are being typically receptive,” Chowdhury said.
“Pakistan is trying to send a political message ... It is up to us to decide how we react to it in the midterm and long term. And it is for the next political government to decide what to do with it.”
