Bangladesh looks to resolve pending issues with "close friend" India

Dhaka, May 5(ANI): Bangladesh has expressed happiness over the recent "extraordinary close friendship" with India and raised hopes that long-standing contentious issues between the two neighbours would be resolved soon.

Addressing mediapersons here, International Affairs adviser to the Bangladesh Prime Minister, Gowher Rizvi said, "In the last two years; three years in fact, Bangladesh and India have forged an extraordinary close friendship. Many of the outstanding issues that have played the relations between the two countries for the last 40 years have largely been resolved, barring one or two issues, which we hope to resolve in the near future,"

He said that Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee's visit to Bangladesh would provide an impetus to bilateral relations, however adding that the issue of signing of the Teesta agreement was "a little far fetched."

"Mukherjee is very close friend of Bangladesh, so obviously we will take the opportunity of talking to him about all other issues as well, but to expect or to create an expectation that we are going to sign the Teesta agreement with him, I think it is a little far fetched, he is not the water minister," said Rizvi.

Officials in India and Bangladesh had earlier said that a deal to share water from two rivers, the Teesta and the Feni, looked unlikely because of West Bengal's disagreement.

Mukherjee will meet opposition leader Khaleda Zia, and participate in the concluding ceremony of 150th anniversary celebrations of Nobel Laureate Rabindranath Tagore in Bangladesh. (ANI)