Tohidul to meet Jaishankar in Muscat

Foreign Affairs Adviser Md Tohidul Hussain on Sunday joined the two-day Indian Ocean Conference in Muscat and shared stage with India’s External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar along with Foreign Ministers of the Maldives, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Oman, Iran and others.

Foreign Affairs Adviser Hossain, who reached Muscat from Dubai, and his Indian counterpart Jaishankar are likely to hold a meeting on the sidelines of the 8th Indian Ocean Conference.

“There is a possibility…..we expect that the meeting will be held,” Spokesperson at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Mohammad Rafiqul Alam told reporters at the weekly briefing recently.

The conference, hosted jointly by the Indian foreign ministry and the Omani government, and organised by a Delhi-based think tank India Foundation, will host 27 countries including foreign ministers from Bhutan, Sri Lanka, Nepal.

If a bilateral meeting on the sidelines is held, this would be their second meeting since the formation of the interim government led by Prof Muhammad Yunus in August last year.

Adviser Hossain and Minister Jaishankar had their first meeting on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September last year.