Dhaka, May 6 – State Minister for Foreign Affairs M Shahriar Alam on Sunday said a proposal to include India in the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) with an observer status has been made as part of reform of the organisation.“India is a big country with a huge Muslim population which is bigger than the total population of two or three Muslim countries,” he said while talking to reporters after the conclusion of the 45th OIC Council of Foreign Ministers (CFM) at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre in the city.
Shahriar said Bangladesh’s proposal for bringing reforms in the OIC was accepted by the conference and Bangladesh and Turkey will jointly work on it.
While addressing the inaugural session of the OIC-CFM on Saturday, Foreign Minister AH Mahmood Ali mentioned that a number of countries — which are not OIC members– have large numbers of Muslims as their citizens and stressed the need for building bridges with those non-OIC countries so that a large number of Muslim population do not remain untouched by the good works of OIC.
“The Muslims may be minority in those (non-OIC) countries, but in terms of number, they often exceed the total population of many OIC member countries. There’s a need to build bridges with those non-OIC countries so that a large number of Muslim populations don’t remain untouched by the good work of OIC. That is why, OIC reforms and restructuring should be done,” he had said. – UNB
