Acting foreign secretary Md Ruhul Alam Siddique on Tuesday said that the Bangladesh foreign ministry had some responsibility for not taking place an expected meeting between interim government chief adviser Professor Muhammad Yunus and British prime minister Keir Starmer in London during his June 10-13 visit to the United Kingdom.
鈥楢s it was our responsibility to organise the visit, we are to some extent responsible for not taking place the meeting between our chief adviser and his British counterpart, as announced by our side on the advent of his visit to the UK,鈥� the secretary said, responding to a question at a press briefing in the capital Dhaka on the situation of Bangladeshis in Tehran amid the ongoing conflict between Iran and Israel.
He said that the Yunus-Starmer meeting could not be arranged due to some reasons on the British side.
Ruhul, however, described Yunus鈥檚 four-day UK visit as 鈥榲ery successful鈥�, highlighting his one-to-one audience with British King Charles III.
He also mentioned his engagements with the British authorities in London as a 鈥榯angible progress鈥� in recovering stolen assets beyond receiving the King Charles III Harmony Award during the visit.
Before his visit to the UK, the secretary said that the British High Commissioner to Bangladesh Sarah Cooke had informed him that the visit was upgraded to the official one.
And it was usually expected that the heads of the governments would meet during such a visit, he added.
During his UK visit, Yunus also held a meeting with Bangladesh Nationalist Party acting chairman Tarique Rahman in London on June 13.
