Editorial
Rumsfeld's whirlwind tour
What did it reap?
Despite the fact that US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld was diplomatic enough to avoid a direct request to Dhaka to send troops to Iraq and Afghanistan, there can be little doubt that hoping to persuade the Bangladeshi government to rethink its long-held and well thought-out position on the deployment of peacekeeping troops was a primary goal of his overnight mission to Dhaka. Though nothing like this has appeared in the press, it would also stand to reason that Rumsfeld might have raised issues of militancy concerning the South Asia region, including Bangladesh. The public would be curious to know how our government responded. He might have touched on the issue of the huge arms haul in Chittagong. On this, we would welcome America's considerable expertise in tracing the origin and destination of the arms smuggling. This paper has, in fact, urged our government to seek international help. We just hope some progress has been made there. The government's position on the question of sending troops to Iraq, reiterated by Foreign Minister Morshed Khan, that Bangladesh will only consider doing it if requested by the country in which they are to be deployed and only under the auspices of the UN, seems to us to be eminently sensible. We support it wholeheartedly. Bangladeshi peacekeepers have served with honour and distinction in many hot-spots around the world, and have earned the respect of the international community. However, they have never been deployed except under UN auspices, and we believe that this well established understanding is a wise one. In the case of Iraq, a UN resolution is under discussion, however, it remains unclear what the exact mandate that the resolution will ultimately endorse will be, and there exist manifest imperfections in the draft resolutions currently being circulated, which may or may not be resolved in the final version. The pre-eminent concern of any Bangladeshi government must be the safety and security of our troops and our own national interest. It would be unwise to commit troops in a situation where they would not be welcomed by the Iraqi people. We have consistently opposed the Bush administration's Iraq policy, largely stemming from our belief that the invasion and occupation of Iraq has been contrary to international law and an affront to the sovereignty of the Iraqi people. So, the question of troops commitment by us couldn't be de-linked from that basic position of ours. If the US were to hand over control, in a truly meaningful way, either to the UN or to the Iraqi people, and if the Iraqi people were to request Bangladeshi peacekeeping troops, then we could consider supporting such deployment. But not until then.
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