Bangladesh and Myanmar signed an agreement on Tuesday to avoid double taxation to help boost trade, and agreed to hold talks to resolve outstanding issues including a row over Muslim refugees in Bangladesh. The agreement came during the visit of General Maung Aye, Vice Chairman of the State Peace and Development Council of Myanmar, the country's second most powerful man.
Annual bilateral trade between Bangladesh and Myanmar currently is around $60 million. "Bangladesh has sought to import natural gas and rice from Myanmar," Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, foreign affairs adviser (minister) to Bangladesh's military-backed interim government told reporters.
The repatriation of Rohingya Muslim refugees to Myanmar, demarcation of maritime boundary between the two countries, and Bangladesh's proposal for a road link with China via Myanmar, were among the issues discussed at the talks, officials said. "There is need for further inter-action between the two sides to solve the demarcation and refugee repatriation issues," a Bngladesh government spokesman said.
Bangladesh has been hosting over 20,000 Myanmar Rohingya refugees at two official camps in south-eastern Cox's Bazar region, near Myanmar, since 1992. They are the remnants of around 250,000 Rohingyas who fled to Bangladesh alleging persecution by the military in Myanmar's western Rakhaine state, which borders Bangladesh.
Bangladesh wants Myanmar to take back the refugees, but the government there says it will first verify their particulars. The two sides have also been trying to negotiate a maritime boundary. Bangladesh last year said that some offshore blocks that Myanmar had been trying to explore in co-operation with India are on its waters. General Maung was accompanied to Bangladesh by a 55-member entourage, including his wife and seven ministers. The visit was originally scheduled in September last year but postponed due to pro-democracy protests.
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