RCDS team concludes weeklong visit

As part of their study tour, the students also visited Pakistan and India before coming to Bangladesh. During their stay here, they travelled to several places and had meetings with government and NGO officials and the mediapersons.

Led by Senior Directing Staff (Air) of RCDS Air Vice-Marshal S Chisnall, the delegation yesterday exchanged views with a select group of diplomatic correspondents.

Briefing the journalists, S Chisnall said the mission of the Royal College is to prepare senior officers and officials of the United Kingdom and other countries as well as future leaders in the private and public sectors through enhancing their analytical power, knowledge of defence and international security and strategic vision.

The college runs one course every year -- from January to December -- and each course is attended by a maximum of 88 members, one-third of them from the UK and the rest from overseas.

Military officers of Colonel/Brigadier or equivalent rank make up 75 percent of the students. The remaining 25 percent are civil servants, diplomats, police officers and representatives from the private sector.

The main part of the curriculum focuses on defence and international security at the grand strategic level. These studies are set against a backdrop of international affairs and conducted over four terms.

The aims of the terms are to examine the principal influences upon, and potential sources of, global instability and conflict, and how conflict might best be prevented or resolved.