PM reaches London

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who is leading a 57-member delegation, reached London yesterday to attend the first Girl Summit there and hold a meeting with her British counterpart David Cameron.
The summit, which is scheduled to be held today, is aimed at mobilising domestic and international efforts to improve the lives of girls and women and to end female genital mutilation and child, early and forced marriage.
On the sidelines of the summit, Hasina will hold a bilateral meeting with British Prime Minister David Cameron and other government and opposition leaders.
Hosted by the UK government and UNICEF, the meeting will also help end early and forced marriage of girls, prevent violence against women, deliver their babies safely, get jobs, have education and support legal reforms to land and inheritance rights.
As per the programme schedule, the PM will first meet David Cameron at 10 Downing Street in London at 8:45am today.
Diplomatic sources said the Hasina-Cameron talks are extremely significant as this is the first meeting with any head of government since the January 5 national election which the British government strongly opposed.
Foreign ministry officials said the meeting has been fixed for 30 minutes when the two leaders would discuss matters of mutual interest.
About two lakh Bangladeshis are now getting opportunity to study in the UK while around 80,000 people are employed in about 12,000 restaurants in Britain, whose annual turnover is more than 4 billion pound-sterling.
Expatriate Bangladeshis in the UK are sending nearly one billion dollar in remittances to Bangladesh annually.
Britain also contributed $15 million to garment sector reform projects, after the Rana Plaza incident, undertaken by the International Labour Organisation and the Bangladesh government.
After meeting with Cameron, Hasina will then move to summit venue at Walworth Academy, Shorncliffe Road in London where she will first meet separately with UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake and State Minister of Department for International Development of UK Desmond Swayne.
The prime minister is due to attend a joint question-answer session with Chantal Compaore, the First Lady of Burkina Faso, and Malala Yousufzai today. Hasina will take part in both the high level sessions of the summit.
In the afternoon, British shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander will call on Hasina at London Hilton on Park Lane Hotel. A delegation of All Party Parliamentary Group on Bangladesh will also meet her at the hotel room.    
Hasina will then attend an iftar and dinner to be hosted by the expatriate Bangladeshis in the UK.
On her concluding day of the visit on Wednesday, the PM will give an interview with the BBC Bangla Service in the morning and depart London around 6:16pm and arrive in Dhaka around 9:30am on Thursday.