Foreign minister S Jaishankar met Bangladesh foreign adviser Touhid Hossain. Talks come ahead of a possible meeting between PM Modi and Bangladesh chief adviser Md Yunus on the margins of Bimstec summit in Thailand on April 3-4. Both Modi and Yunus are likely to attend the Bim stec summit. India has sought to promote the inter-regional BimStec, which excludes Pakistan and counts Thailand as a member, as a more relevant forum for regional cooperation and connectivity, as Saarc remains practically defunct. Bangladesh will officially take over as the chair of the group from Thailand at the summit. The meeting comes amid tense bilateral ties over the presence of ousted ex-PM Sheikh Hasina in India since last August. Both sides recognised the challenges the two neighbours are facing in terms of bilateral relations and discussed the necessity to work together to address those, it said in its statement on the Jaishanksar-Hossain meeting. According to Dhaka, ahead of talks between border forces this week, it was hoped that various border related issues would be discussed and resolved during the meeting.
