Taiwanese office in Dhaka

By A Citizen, Dhaka
13 March 2004, 18:00 PM
The news item published today (March 11) in The Daily Star shows incompetence of our senior level bureaucrats in handling simple matters. Any sensible and reasonably informed person in the whole globe knows China's stand on Taiwan and vice versa. It is known that Bangladesh follows 'One China' policy and does not recognise Taiwan as a sovereign independent state. We do not have diplomatic relations with that island either. Whatever business is going on, these are through some other mechanisms. Business and other peoples from the two coun

tries are visiting each other by some means not officially recognised. Under this situation, how a Taiwanese office, which boastfully declared that it will issue visa, can be set up in Dhaka without the knowledge of our foreign office? And then, the BOI chief says that it is not the concern of other ministries. Now we find our officials are running here and there, including one being called from Beijing to prepare him so that he can explain our position to China. What an embarrassment for the nation.

One newspapers indicated that the office opening was done under a package deal with some influential persons. I think the persons involved in the package deal, if any, was unaware that their clients made them simply pawns in their greater move to harm Bangladesh's good business relations with China.