China’s new Foreign Minister Qin Geng is in Dhaka after midnight tonight for a two-hour stopover on his first five-nation African tour.
Foreign Ministry officials informed our diplomatic correspondent that Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momin will meet him at Hazrat Shah Jalal International Airport and meet the Chinese minister there.
“The Chinese foreign minister will make a stopover from 1:00 a.m. because the plane he is traveling in will refuel at Dhaka Airport,” said a foreign ministry official.
The official said the meeting with the foreign minister was informal, but some issues of bilateral relations could come up.
Qin, who has been China’s ambassador to the United States, will visit Ethiopia, Gabon, Angola, Benin and Egypt from January 9 to 16, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said at a daily news conference on monday
Qin, 56, became appointed foreign minister on December 30. He succeeds Wang Yi, 69, who replaced Yang Jiechi as the government’s top foreign policy officer.
On January 6, 2017, former Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi stopped at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka on his way to Africa.
Then Foreign Minister Shahidul Haque welcomed the Chinese Foreign Minister.
The stopover comes a year after Chinese President Xi Jinping’s official visit to Bangladesh on October 14-15, 2016.
