US fine with Bangladesh joining Chinese naval exercise

A US official has said they have no problem with Bangladesh joining China’s naval exercises as Washington respects Dhaka’s “sovereign rights” to engage with any country.
Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of the US Political-Military Affairs Bureau Tom Kelly made the comment in Dhaka Tuesday after leading the US side in the security dialogue. But he said they did not discuss Bangladesh’s relations with China.
“In fact, US also carries out wide-range of military-to-military engagement with China,” Kelly said at a joint press briefing after the dialogue, according to a news agency.
“We hope Bangladesh would be comfortable in allowing us to go ahead and engage in those exchanges with China.”
“So we really don’t have any problem,” he said and added that Bangladesh continued to participate with the US in a number of military exercises as well.
A Bangladesh navy frigate, BNS Abu Bakar, is understood to have left Chittagong earlier this month and reached the Chinese port of Qingdao to take part in rare naval exercise this week.
Kelly told reporters that they wanted Bangladesh to have “excellent” security relations with all countries in the region.
Washington, he added, felt “very serene” in its own security relations with Dhaka and that they believed in regional integration that “makes perfect sense”.
They discussed about the importance for both the US and Bangladesh “to be engaged in promoting regional integration”.
He said the security relations with Bangladesh focused on four pillars – humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, peacekeeping Operations and defence cooperation, counterterrorism, and security through both maritime and border.