Dhaka: Bangladesh has strongly condemned remarks by United States’ Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, labelling the South Asian country as a place where the al-Qaeda group carried out attacks.
“Such irresponsible comments by a senior leader are very unfortunate and unacceptable. Bangladesh strongly rejects these kind of baseless remarks and falsification,” Bangladesh’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Wednesday.
In a statement published a day before on the US State Department’s website, Pompeo implicated some countries as “terror hubs”, drawing criticism from several quarters.
He also termed Iran as a new home base of al-Qaeda, a remark also protested by Tehran.
“Imagine too the potential to completely upend fragile places with an established al-Qaeda presence like Libya, Yemen, and the Maghreb, or increase turmoil in places like Bangladesh, where al-Qaeda cells have carried out attacks,” Pompeo said in the statement.
In response, the Bangladesh foreign ministry statement said “there is no evidence of any presence of al-Qaeda” in the Muslim-majority country and stressed that it maintains a “zero tolerance” policy against all forms of “terrorism and violent extremism”.
