Senior Pentagon official Randall G Schriver is coming to Dhaka next week to discuss about two defence agreements pending with Bangladesh.
The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs is scheduled to have meetings with Security Adviser to Prime Minister Tarique Siddique, State Minister for Foreign Affairs Md Shahriar Alam, and Armed Forces Division senior officials.
With a vision to engage more, Washington proposed the agreementson Acquisition and Cross-Service Agreement (ACSA) and General Security of Military Information Agreement (GSOMIA).
Out of the two deals, without GSOMIA, it is not possible for the US to sell high-end defence equipment to any country.
The issue was discussed at the Bangladesh-US Partnership Dialogue in June when Foreign Secretary M Shahidul Haque had meeting with US State Department Under Secretary David Hale in Washington.
“The United States requested Bangladesh to continue the discussion on protection of classified military information shared between the two countries. Bangladesh indicated its interest in continuing the discussion,” the joint statement of the dialogue said.
A senior official said, “Both the countries are willing and we need to find a convergence platform where we can trust each other.”
Bangladesh has declared Forces Goal 2030 vision and to achieve that Washington can be a source of defence equipment, he said.
Bilateral defence cooperation issue is being discussed in different platforms including political dialogue at the foreign secretary level, he added.
The foreign secretary also had meeting with Pentagon official including Randell in June this year, the official said.
He said, “We have training, exercise, intel sharing and other cooperation with Wasington.”
Meanwhile, Air Chief Marshal Masihuzzaman Serniabat is going to the US next week.
According to US diplomats, Bangladesh is willing to buy high-end US helicopter to upgrade its defence system.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has a vision to modernise defence forces and declared the Bangladesh Military Forces Goal 2030 in line with the development advancement of the country.
It is considered as top priority area and the country has allocated significant amount resources for that purpose.
The budget allocation for 2019-20 stipulated that “Procurement of arms, ammunitions and modern warfare equipment’s, training in modern war strategies and extension of information technology is important to build a versatile and skilled army, navy and air force. Considering this, the area of modernization of armed forces has been selected as top priority area.”