Bangladesh will ask India for trade facilitation measures to reduce ballooning trade gap with New Delhi while foreign ministers of two countries will meet in the Indian capital on September 8, foreign ministry officials said. Raheed Ejaz's article in New Age on Dipu Moni - S. M. Krishna meet on September 8th.

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Apart from focusing on trade, foreign minister Dipu Moni will request her Indian counterpart SM Krishna to resolve the issue of equitable sharing waters of common rivers, especially that of signing a deal on river Teesta.

Since the Awami League-led grand alliance assumed office on January 6, this will be the second foreign minister-level meeting between the two next door-neighbours, which have a number of contentious issues unresolved for decades.

Pranab Mukherjee, the then Indian external affairs minister, visited Bangladesh on February 9, on a single-day trip.

‘Dipu Moni’s trip between September 7 and 10 will also do the ground work for prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s planned visit to the Indian capital later this year,’ said an official of the ministry.

According to the tentative schedule, Bangladesh foreign minister will call on Indian prime minister Manmohan Singh and finance minister Pranab Mukherjee on September 8.

Dipu Moni also has plans to meet Indian Congress Party president Sonia Gandhi and railway minister Mamta Banerjee on September 9.

Mukta D Tomar, the acting Indian high commissioner in Dhaka on Thursday had a meeting with the concerned foreign ministry official on the preparation of Bangladesh foreign minister’s planned New Delhi trip.

About Dhaka’s proposal for trade facilitation measures, trade officials said that Bangladesh would once again request India to open its market further and allow more duty-free access of Bangladeshi products in the biggest South Asian market.

Commerce ministry officials, however, are skeptical of getting any specific outcome from this trip in regards to reduction in trade gap, given the history of previous such talks at various levels.

India’s previous duty-free market offers for eight million of Bangladeshi garments remained largely unutilised as New Delhi later imposed additional countervailing duty in the name of protecting its domestic producers, an official pointed out.

Bangladesh would repeat the request for resolving the long-pending issue of water sharing, considering proposals of connectivity with landlocked Bhutan and Nepal through Indian territories.

Dwelling on the issue of transit and transhipment, a communication ministry official said India had so far given several proposals including the latest two — Kolkata-Dhaka-Agartala direct bus service in 2006 and using Bangladesh territory for carrying heavy equipment for a power plant in Tripura in 2007.

‘Apart from the above two proposals, India has long been pressing Bangladesh to allow it access to Chittagong port using Ashuganj as port of call as part of a multi-modal transport arrangement and introduce Kolkata-Narayanganj container train service,’ said the official.

Responding to a query about the port of call, he said at present Indian goods are being carried to Bangladesh thorough river route and India wants to carry goods up to its north-eastern state of Tripura either by rail or road.

Home ministry officials said New Delhi had so far proposed at least four deals for mutual cooperation in addressing terrorism and signing extradition treaty.

An Indian external affairs ministry official recently toured Dhaka to do the spadework for Dipu Moni’s Delhi visit.

As part of their consistent diplomatic manoeuvre, TS Tirumurti, joint secretary (Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Maldives) of the Indian external affairs ministry, visited Dhaka on August 22-23 to discuss pending issues with Bangladesh officials.