Hillary Clinton Urges Bangladesh To Exploit Its Strategic Location

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton Saturday asked Bangladesh to exploit its strategic geo-location and said that its location between India and China, the two aggressively developing economies, gave it tremendous opportunity for development.

China is surely the most developed developing country (and) India also is rapidly progressing ... you are strategically situated between China and India, said Clinton during the second day of her two-day visit to the Dhaka, PTI reported.

She asked its political parties to stop warring and to resolve its differences through dialogues.

The country is going through a political turmoil as tension mounted between the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's ruling party over the disappearance of political activists and killing of a labor activist. The protests by the opposition had turned violent and killed at least five persons, leading to series of strikes and shut-downs in April.

Clinton expressed concern over the alleged human right abuses in the country and asked the government to have independent investigation to the issue.

It would send the wrong signal to foreign investors and buyers if the murder of labor-rights activists like Aminul Islam is not properly investigated, Clinton said, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

However, Clinton praised the progress the country was making and said that country had handled the bilateral issues with India and maritime issues with Myanmar smartly.

She suggested that Bangladesh should explore the economic opportunities in Myanmar.

Calling for further cooperation between the US and Bangladesh, she said that the US would provide $300 million over the next four years to Bangladesh to help it deal with the effects of cyclones and floods caused by climate change.

Clinton publicly backed microcredit pioneer Mohammed Yunus, who was removed last year as head of the Grameen Bank. Yunus had won Nobel Peace Prize for setting up the Grameen Bank which pioneered the microcredit facility to poor and needy women in villages.

She urged the government not to undermine the importance of the bank. We do not want to see any action taken that would in any way undermine or interfere in the operations of the Grameen Bank or its unique organizational structure where the poor women themselves are the owners, Clinton said, according to a BBC report.