Speech delivered by H.E. Dr. Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, Hon'ble Adviser for the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and Expatriates' Welfare & Overseas Employment on the eve of the visit of UK Home Secretary , 9 April 2008.

- I deem it a great honour to have with us this afternoon someone I can say by this time is a friend of Bangladesh, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, one of the few women to hold one of the Great Offices of State in the UK. I also bid a very warm welcome to the other members of her delegation.

- There is much that is common between Britain and Bangladesh. Our ties go back centuries. Today we are using these shared values to construct a strategic partnership, a partnership that will bridge our two countries in two different continents - one a modern industrial state and another a modernizing developing one with great potentials.

- Our commonalities are legion.
- As all know, in conversations we both use English, in games we both share an interest in cricket, and in cuisine we both celebrate the chicken tandoori masala, a principal British pub-fare which unsurprisingly has found its way into the menu this afternoon.
- I am pleased to be able to tell you we have held very useful talks earlier this afternoon. These have covered a large proportion of the spectrum of our relationship, though not everything because such an agenda would be too long for any single meeting to address.
- Apart from the close bilateral relationship that we have, we have worked together in other international fora such as the Commonwealth and the UN. At the UN we are cosponsors of a key resolution in the United Nations General Assembly on gender mainstreaming.
- Bangladesh will hold a side-event to partner the UK on the Call to Action event in New York in September. In May we will jointly focus on Climate Change in Bangladesh in London and do a follow-up with a Wilton Park on Bangladesh in June. In diplomacy, the best definition of friendship is a long list of 'to do' things together.
- So, in a modest measure, Bangladesh and the UK are working towards the fruition of some common aspirations: towards creating a world that is peaceful and stable and free of terrorism; where the environment is protected; where the ambience is appropriate for development; where human rights and rule of law prevail, and where governments learn it is better to live with an inconvenient idea than to try and suppress it.
- To that kind of world, and that kind of cooperation, may I invite you to raise your glasses.