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Roundup: Pakistani envoy summoned to Bangladesh's foreign ministry in apparent tit-for-tat move

Xinhua, May 12, 2016 Adjust font size:

In an apparent tit-for-tat move Pakistan Ambassador to Bangladesh Sujha Alam was summoned to the Bangladesh's Ministry of Foreign Affairs once again Thursday.

The move came hours after Pakistan summoned Bangladesh's envoy in Islamabad.

Islamabad Thursday summoned Bangladesh acting High Commissioner Nazmul Huda and handed over its resolution expressing "serious concerns" over the execution of seventy-four year old Nizami, ameer (president) of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party.

Pakistan's parliament Wednesday passed a unanimous resolution in condemnation of the execution in protest of which Turkey on Thursday recalled its ambassador to Bangladesh.

Turkish foreign ministry had already strongly condemned the execution.

Nizami who served as the agriculture and industries minister in ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's 2001-2006 cabinet was hanged on early Wednesday for war crimes.

Mizanur Rahman, secretary (bilateral) at Bangladesh's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, summoned Shujha Alam at his office at 5:00 p.m. (local time) Thursday.

Later a foreign ministry statement said Bangladesh strongly protested the Pakistani parliamentary resolution condemning Nizamn's execution for 1971 crimes against humanity, summoning Islamabad's envoy to the foreign office here.

After a 20-minute meeting, Alam told waiting journalists that there is no possibility of breaking off diplomatic relations of the two brotherly countries.

"Recent incidents won't affect relations of brotherly countries," he said while leaving the Ministry of Foreign Affairs with a smile on his face.

Earlier on May 9 the ministry summoned Alam to lodge a formal protest over the statement issued by his country on an apex court verdict that paved the way for execution of Nizami.

Nizami was indicted in 2012 with 16 charges of crimes against humanity, including looting, mass killings, arson, rape and forcefully converting people to Muslims during the 1971 war.

The indictment order said Nizami was a key organizer of the Al-Badr, an auxiliary force of then Pakistani army which planned and executed the killing of Bangalee intellectuals at the end of the war.

Relations between Pakistan and Bangladesh have been tense over the execution of five opposition politicians, including Nizami at the latest, since 2013.

Pakistan in January this year ordered a senior Bangladeshi diplomat to leave the country in what appears to a tit-for-tat move nearly two weeks after Bangladesh had asked Pakistan to withdraw a diplomat.

After returning to power in January 2009, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the daughter of Bangladesh's independence hero Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, established the first tribunal in March 2010, almost 40 years after the 1971 fight for independence from Pakistan. Endit