News Desk
DHAKA: Facing domestic backlash, Bangladesh has backtracked on its initial interest in joining the US-planned military force in Gaza, with the interim administration saying it would leave the decision to the government appointed after next month’s polls.
The possibility of Bangladesh joining the International Stabilization Force — a part of US President Donald Trump’s controversial Gaza peace plan — was floated by National Security Adviser Khalilur Rahman last week, during his visit to Washington D.C., where he said he had “expressed Bangladesh’s interest in principle” to join it.
The announcement was immediately met with criticism from civil society at home, where any move perceived as undermining Bangladesh’s support for the Palestinians is unlikely to be popular.
Following the pushback, the country’s top diplomat, Foreign Affairs Adviser Touhid Hossain, told reporters on Wednesday that “no decision has yet been made” and that the caretaker Cabinet — which is overseeing Bangladesh until new leadership takes office after the February vote — “will not do anything … that the next government would need to completely reverse.”
Bangladesh will hold general elections on Feb. 12, and the main two parties contesting it — the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami — have already distanced themselves from the caretaker government’s decisions.
“We will not blindly adhere to any policy that has been adopted by this interim government,” Nawshad Zamir, BNP’s international affairs secretary, told Arab News, while Jamaat’s spokesperson, Ahsanul Mahboob Zubair, said the party would “not take any such steps that violate the UN and existing international laws and stand in contrast to our people’s aspirations.”
