My Travels with Minister Kamaruzzaman

Part III

---Ziauddin M. Choudhury

In November that year (1973) Kamaruzzman was asked by Prime Minister Sheikh Mujib
to lead a delegation of trade and commerce to the United States. This mission was not
contemplated at least until the completion of the EEC countries visit. The invitation was
arranged by the State Department, and it would take place a few months before the
historic visit of Bangabandhu to the US. The delegation was as usual small, but in
addition to the three of us (Minister, Joint Secretary, myself), the Chairman of Jute Mills
Corporation, Khurshid Anwar, joined the delegation.

In a wintry November morning we all arrived at JFK Airport to be received by then

Permanent Representative to the UN, Anwarul Karim. New York was not the first
destination, it was a stop on our way to Washington DC where we landed the following
day.

The Embassy of Bangladesh in Washington DC was then located in a hotel near DuPont
Circle where the Minister had his first meeting with the Ambassador, Hussain Ali, and
other embassy officials including AMA Muhith, who was then our Economic Minister in
the US. Next three days, Kamaruzzaman would meet with Senators, Congressmen,
President of EXIMBANK, and President of OPIC, besides the resident Bangladesh
community in Washington area.

Kamaruzzman’s visit to the US was significant in many respects. He was the second
senior minister in then Bangladesh cabinet to be invited by the US that would be
followed by the historic visit by Bangabandhu. (The first senior minister to visit US was
Tajuddin earlier in 1973.) The visit was not simply for advancing trade relations with the
US, but more importantly to assess US attitude to the newly sovereign country, which the
Nixon government had not supported during the war of liberation. To that end
Kamaruzzaman had meetings with two US senators (Frank Church, and Stan Percy), and
several Representatives of the House, including Congressman Poage, who was Chairman
of House Agriculture Committee that period, all of which were fruitful.

Senator Church, Democratic Senator from Illinois, was a staunch supporter of the
Bangladesh liberation movement. He had raised the issue of Pakistan army atrocities in
then East Pakistan in the Senate. In meeting with him Kamaruzzaman thanked him
profusely for his support in our difficult times. Senator Percy, the Republican Senator
from Illinois was a member the Senate Foreign Relations Committee (later becoming its
Chairman). He was gracious in his meeting with Kamaruzzaman, and offered to support
all efforts to mitigate the plights of the fledgling country.

I have a special recollection of the meeting with Congressman Poage because of a remark
by the Congressman. The meeting was mostly of a courteous nature, and it required a
substantial amount of diplomatic tact on Kamaruzzaman’s part to avoid the sensitive side
of the rather negative role that US had initially played in the war of our liberation.
Bangladesh. The minister politely thanked the “people of the United States” for their
support for Bangladesh, and hoped for US help for the country’s rehabilitation. Toward
the end of the meeting in the Capitol, the Congressman asked the minister what were the
chances that the newly independent Bangladesh could eventually merge with West
Bengal since both regions spoke Bengali. The minister politely replied there were no such
chances. If language were to be the basis of nationhood, all English speaking countries
would be one country, he would later remark.

A major event of Kamaruzzaman’s later visit to New York City was a luncheon hosted
by the New York Chamber of Commerce in the deluxe Plaza Hotel. In an eloquent
speech, much like the one given by him in Brussels for the EEC lunch a month before,
the Minister described the economic plight of the war ravaged country, and urged on his
hosts the need for its rehabilitation with support from public as well as private sector. As
in the speeches before Kamaruzzaman made an impression on his audience by his
communication skills, be it in English or Bengali (for a domestic audience).

My last foreign travel with Kamaruzzaman was to then Soviet Union in December of
1973. It was unforgettable for several reasons. First, it was the first and only Communist
country that Kamaruzzaman would visit in his entire term as Foreign Trade Minister.
Second, weather wise the timing could not have been worse—it was the dead of winter
with temperatures never rising above zero. Third, the opulent reception given to the
Minister and his entourage was nothing comparable to what we had witnessed in our
other travels to the west. The Minister held meetings with his Soviet counterpart in the
Kremlin, was feted to lunches and dinners by two other Cabinet ministers, was taken to
Leningrad (now St Petersburg), and honored by the City Council. A major outcome of
this travel was a forma trade agreement with the Soviet Union much like the one signed
by Kamaruzzaman with India earlier that year.

There are a few concluding points on my reflections on Kamaruzzaman’s foreign travels.

Bangladesh in the early seventies was characterized by a bias toward the socialist block
in its foreign policy. Indeed, socialism was one of the four state principles laid down in
Bangladesh constitution that time. It is also believed that the top leadership of Awami
League that time was largely inclined to building friendship and trade relations only with
the socialist/communist block. Yet, out of the fourteen countries that Kamruzzaman
visited in his entire term as Foreign Trade Minister, only one was Communist. From my
association with Kamaruzzaman in the three-year period that I worked for him I had
found little evidence that he was enamored of the socialist system. Despite the rather
egregious reception given to him in USSR, in his dealings with Soviet Officials
Kamaruzzaman was more restrained than he was with government and public sector
individuals in the free enterprise countries. In a curious contradiction with then
Bangladesh government policy on state ownership of major industrial enterprise,
Kamaruzzaman was courting for private investment in his travels to the West. In
personal comments abroad, he often expressed a desire for an economy that would have a
blend of state controlled and privately owned enterprises.
The reminiscences above are to commemorate a great Bangladeshi—Late AHM
Kamaruzzaman, a leading figure of our national liberation struggle, and one of the top
four statesmen that our country had lost in the darkest period of our history in 1975. We
mourn the absence of political vision, leadership, and patriotism of these leaders today
when our country is passing through another political crisis. Men like AHM
Kamaruzzman and the other leaders we lost tragically are not borne every day. A greater
lament is the legacy they left behind is forgotten easily. We could be a stronger nation,
morally and politically, if we could only follow the examples of the leaders who brought
this nation into being.

(Concluded)

The author worked as Private Secretary to A.H.M. Kamaruzzaman from 1972-75.