Dhaka, Apr 18 The first-ever security dialogue between Bangladesh and the US will start on Thursday to explore new avenues of cooperation in the areas of defence, disaster management and counter-terrorism.
"The (security) meeting will generally discuss the security-related issues," additional foreign secretary Mostafa Kamal told the bdnews24.com Wednesday evening.
Kamal will lead the 21-member Bangladeshi side at the meeting while US State department political-military affairs assistant secretary Andrew J Shapiro will head an 11-member delegation.
On Apr 9, US ambassador Dan Mozena told bdnews24.com that the dialogue would talk about military cooperation, security, assistance and disaster management.
The meeting is an initiative to develop an umbrella or framework where Bangladesh and the US can have security cooperation, said a source in the foreign ministry.
"Now we have cooperation in areas including army, defence and disaster management but all of these are separate arrangements," he said.
"We are trying to have an institutional arrangement where all security-related cooperation would be worked out," he explained.
Citing an example, he said Bangladesh army signed training cooperation agreement in 1989 while it also had a disaster management memorandum of understanding under which Sea Angel ship came to Bangladesh.
"If it serves our purpose, we want to have a security framework," the official said.
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