By Xinhua,
Dhaka : Indian High Commissioner to Bangladesh Pinak Ranjan Chakraborty on Saturday was summoned and handed formal protest against survey by Indian ships within Bangladesh waters in the Bay of Bengal.
Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Touhid Hossain, who lodged the formal government protest, told reporters that the Indian envoy was asked to stop any survey or development activities and remove the ships from the area until maritime boundary between the two countries is settled by “mutual agreement”.
Touhid hoped that the survey ships would stop survey or development work following the protest, which came in the wake of reports about Indian ships’ trespass upon Bangladesh’s territorial waters.
The Indian envoy proposed that Bangladesh send a technical team to India as soon as possible to discuss the maritime issue as the two countries started talks on delimitation of the maritime boundary in September this year after a lapse of 22 years.
An Indian survey ship was seen conducting exploration in the deep sea within the maritime area claimed by Bangladesh under the terms of the Territorial Water and Maritime Zones Act 1974.
Talking to reporters Pinak observed that this is an overlapping zone and both India and Bangladesh claim it. Since the matter is under discussion, he proposed to the Bangladeshi government to send a team to Delhi “as soon as possible”.
He said the survey ships are not Indian. These are Jamaican ships chartered by a private company having license from the Indian government to conduct the survey.
The Indian high commissioner categorically said, “We’re keen that Bangladesh team goes to Delhi to sort out these issues. Otherwise, these overlapping claims will remain and ships from both sides will come.”
Asked about possibility of escalation of tensions in the Bay of Bengal over the survey, he said, “There is no such tension. We talk to each other all the time.”
The Bangladeshi foreign secretary said the proposal for discussion is “positive” and Bangladesh would send the technical team to Delhi at the end of January next year at the earliest.
Meanwhile, Caretaker government Foreign Adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury in a statement said, “We are confident that peaceful deliberations and diplomatic measures will ultimately lead to a mutually acceptable solution.”
He however said just as Bangladesh respects international norms in such solutions, “we expect and hope that all our neighbors will do the same. In this spirit, we have requested India to postpone the survey till such time a settlement on the subject is reached.”