Acting Speaker Meets Nepal's Ambassador, Discusses SAARC Revitalization

Acting Speaker of the Jatiya Sangsad, Kaisar Kamal, held a courtesy meeting with the Ambassador of Nepal to Bangladesh, Ghanashyam Bhandari, at his office on Wednesday. During the meeting, they agreed on the importance of revitalizing the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC). The Acting Speaker highlighted that the late President Ziaur Rahman founded SAARC with the aim of achieving desired development among South Asian nations through expanded mutual cooperation. He expressed that there is still an opportunity to achieve this goal by making SAARC functional again and urged Nepal to take the lead in this regard, an appeal the Nepalese Ambassador supported. Kamal also expressed optimism that activating parliamentary friendship groups between the two countries would strengthen parliamentary diplomacy, enhance bilateral relations, facilitate mutual parliamentary visits, enable the exchange of experiences in lawmaking and good governance, foster cooperation on bilateral interests in international forums, and create opportunities to work on shared challenges and potentials. He further noted the potential for both countries to leverage opportunities in areas such as electricity import from Nepal, education, culture, youth and people-to-people exchanges, water, energy, regional connectivity, trade, and climate change. Ambassador Bhandari commended Bangladesh's new journey under the leadership of Prime Minister Tareq Rahman and pledged to work more closely with the current democratic government.