The Bangladesh Nationalist Party chairperson, Khaleda Zia, is scheduled to leave Dhaka today for a two-week visit to the United Kingdom and the United States.
Khaleda will leave Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport at 10:15am by an Emirates flight, BNP chairperson’s press secretary Maruf Kamal Khan told New Age.
It will be Khaleda’s first visit as the leader of the opposition to the US and UK.
During her stay in the two
countries, she will meet top officials of the two countries as well as with the Bangladeshis living there.
She will visit her ailing son Tarique Rahman in London.
Tarique Rahman, also the party’s vice-chairman, has been staying in London since he was released from jail on bail during the last army-led interim government.
On May 21, the BNP chief will fly for the United States and stay there until May 27.
Party insiders said that Khaleda, during her week-long stay in the US, is likely to pay a courtesy call on the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, and som congressmen, apart from attending some party meetings there.
The planned meeting between Khaleda and Hillary was not ascertained till Sunday as BNP leaders continued lobbying the US administration for an appointment with Hillary Clinton.
BNP chairperson’s advisers M Osman Faruk, Sabihuddin Ahmed, Abdul Awal Mintoo and Mosaddek Ali Falu, journalist Shafiq Rehman, Khaleda’s press secretary Maruf Kamal Khan, chairperson’s special assistant Shimul Biswas, BNP’s ICT affairs secretary Sharif Shah Kamal Taaj and Mushfiq Fazal Ansary, assistant press secretary to the former prime minister, will accompany Khaleda during her trip to the UK and US.
A three-man delegation comprising Shafiq Rehman, Sabiuddin Ahmed and Mushfiq Fazal Ansari left Dhaka for London on May 9 as an advance team to make preparations for Khaleda’s meeting there, Maruf Kamal Khan told New Age. Another advance team comprising Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury, Osman Faruk, Maruf Kamal Kamal Khan and Sharif Shah Kamal Taaj, who would accompany Khaleda on her tour, would leave UK for US two or three days before her departure from London for US.
Khaleda is expected to return home on May 29.
Courtesy of New Age
