SANTINIKETAN: Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said that international pressure should be
mounted on Myanmar to take Rohingya refugees back to their native lands from Bangladesh.
Speaking at the inauguration of Rs 25-crore-worth Bangladesh Bhaban along with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi here on Friday, the Bangladesh Prime Minister said that her government gave shelter
to 11 lakh Rohingyas on humanitarian grounds and hoped that pressure would be mounted on Myanmar to ensure the return of the refugees to their homes.
On bilateral relations of India and Bangladesh, Hasina said that the two countries created history by exchanging the enclaves after operationalising the Land Boundary Agreement (LBA). “While some countries are fighting wars over enclaves, we have resolved the complex issue so amicably,” she said.
Indirectly referring to the Teesta water sharing, she said: “I do not want to spoil the beautiful programme by counting the pending issues between the two nations but only hope that all issues will be solved.”
The Bangladesh Bhaban will house relics and photographs of Bangladesh Liberation War, 1971 and will house a library and a museum. “This is a part of history which the British could not partition. As Bangladesh constructed this building, we took over the works of renovating Rabindranath Tagore’s house
‘Kuthibari’ in Kushtia district of Bangladesh,” the Prime Minister Modi said.
“The last few years have been a golden period of relations between the two nations. Connectivity closed since 1965 have been reopened besides solving the complex LBA issue. Bangladesh has recently
launched their first satellite. I hope the doors of cooperation in space technology will also open between the two nations in the future,” he added.
“While there are opportunities, there are also a lot of challenges for both of us the most important being climate change,” he added.
Speaking on the occasion, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee said: “Lot of water has flowed down the relations of India and Bangladesh since 1971 and I hope our relations will remain strong
despite everything,” she said. “We have a Nazrul Islam Airport, Nazrul University and Nazrul Tirtha. We also want to construct a Sheikh Mujibur Rahman Bhaban,” she added.