Hina Rabbani Khar Won’t Join D-8 Ministerial Conference in Dhaka

Pakistan's Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Hina Rabbani Khar has cancelled her scheduled trip to Dhaka to attend the ministerial conference of the D-8 alliance.

Confirming the development, Wahida Ahmed, a director general at Bangladesh foreign ministry, on Tuesday said Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, Pakistan's foreign minister, will instead attend the ceremony virtually.

Though the spokesperson did not elaborate on the sudden cancellation at the last minute, she said that they were confirming Pakistan’s presence virtually since the forum is taking place in a “hybrid format”.

The Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs also confirmed the development.

The 20th Ministerial Conference of the D-8 alliance of eight developing countries will be inaugurated virtually by the current president of the alliance, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Malaysia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey are members of the D-8 alliance.

On Sunday, Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen said in a press conference that Hina Rabbani will attend this conference in person.

Her visit to Dhaka would have been the first by a Pakistani minister to Bangladesh in a decade. She was the last Pakistan cabinet member who visited Dhaka in an official capacity in 2012.

The relations between the two SARRC countries had remained fraught for the last 10 years over myriads of matters, including war crimes trials and the expulsion of diplomats, who were accused of espionage.

Last year, there were some diplomatic movements from both sides over how the strained ties could be normalised. The then Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan even made a direct call to his Bangladeshi counterpart Hasina.

However, that hard-earned improvement recently took a backseat when Dhaka had to ask the Pakistan High Commission to remove a mashup photo, combining the pictures of both the country’s national flags from the latter’s official Facebook page, which was uploaded on Jul 21.

Bangladesh’s political and social media exploded over the photo, framing it as a “distortion,” and demonstrations followed against the move by the high commission.

Shahriar Kabir, president of the Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee, described it as the “audacity” of the high commission and urged the government to take strict action against it.

On Sunday, Foreign Minister Momen confirmed that the request to take down the photo had been conveyed to the high commission and they subsequently obliged.

Momen also said at the press conference that Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdullahian will lead the Iranian delegation at the conference. An assistant minister of Egypt, a special envoy of Indonesia, deputy secretary general of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Malaysia, minister of state for Foreign Affairs of Nigeria and deputy foreign minister of Turkey will represent their respective countries at the conference, he said.