State minister for foreign affairs Md Shahriar Alam on Saturday said that Bangladesh believed that cooperation and collaboration among countries in the Indo-Pacific region were essential for the shared prosperity of all.

‘Our Indo-Pacific Outlook is an attempt to tell the world that the region is for common prosperity, not just for those who live in it, but also for the whole world,’ he said.

The state minister was speaking at an international seminar on ‘Bangladesh’s Indo-Pacific Outlook: Opportunities and Way Forward’ at BIISS auditorium.

Foreign secretary Masud Bin Momen and chairman of BIISS, AFM Gousal Azam Sarker, also spoke at the event.

Bangladesh Institute of International and Strategic Studies and Bangladesh Foundation for Regional Studies hosted the daylong seminar.

As a demonstration of the world’s renewed interest in the Indo-Pacific region, various Indo-Pacific strategies, visions, outlooks, guidelines have been introduced and advocated by countries or associations like the United States, European Union, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, the Netherlands, India, ASEAN, Australia, Republic of Korea, Canada, Czech Republic, and Bangladesh at different points in time.

Asia Rebalancing Strategy, Belt and Road Initiative, Free and Open Indo-Pacific, Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, Trilateral Security Pact, Indo-Pacific Tilt, Security and Growth for All in the Region, Indo-Pacific Economic Forum for Prosperity have been adopted by countries centring on Indo-Pacific region to address the new security challenges as well as infrastructure, economic and technological developments in this region.

As a littoral state of the Bay of Bengal, the state minister said, Bangladesh’s appreciation of the Indo-Pacific narratives was based on her foreign policy dictum ‘Friendship towards all, malice towards none,’ set forward by the country’s founding president Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.

Shahriar Alam said a ‘free, open, peaceful, secure and inclusive’ Indo-Pacific is essential for peace, security, stability and growth in the region and beyond.

‘Thus, our Indo-Pacific outlook is not security-centric, rather we focus on inclusive development of this region. It is not about critical choices between the major powers,’ the state minister for foreign affairs said.