C T Online Desk: In a telephone call from the Buckingham Palace this evening, Britain’s King Charles III expressed his gratitude to prime minister Sheikh Hasina for personally attending his mother’s funeral to be held on Monday morning.
The King also thanked the president and the prime minister as well as the people of Bangladesh for their sincere condolences and sympathies to the royal family following the death of Queen Elizabeth II.
During the call, prime minister Sheikh Hasina said, ‘Her late majesty was like a mother figure to me and an extra-ordinary head of Commonwealth,’ adding that, ‘To pay my personal tribute to her, I decided to attend her state funeral.’
The prime minister also informed the King that in Bangladesh, her government observed three days of state mourning as a mark of respect to the late Queen while special prayers were offered for her eternal peace.
She also took the opportunity to personally felicitate King Charles III on his accession to the throne and wished him a long and prosperous reign.
Recalling King Charles’s (then Prince Charles) visit to Bangladesh in 1997, prime minister told the King that Bangladesh was preparing to receive King Charles and the Queen Consort in the coming month on the occasion of 50th anniversary of Bangladesh-UK diplomatic relations.
In response, King Charles III said, ‘The Queen Consort and I were so much looking forward to our visit to Bangladesh on the 50th anniversary, however, due to the recent turn of events, unfortunately we are having to cancel it.’
The King also extended his best wishes for the people of Bangladesh and the Bangladesh-British diaspora.
The Buckingham Palace scheduled the phone call for the new King to personally speak to Bangladesh prime minister now on state visit to the UK to attend late Queen Elizabeth’s state funeral on Monday.
On Sunday, Sheikh Hasina showed her last respect to the Queen Elizabeth II.
She paid respect to the late Queen at her lying-in-state in Westminster Hall and signed a book of condolence at Lancaster House.
Earlier on September 15, Sheikh Hasina arrived in London on an official visit to the United Kingdom to attend the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II.
Bangladesh high commissioner to the UK Saida Muna Tasneem while briefing the reporters said that in the morning the prime minister accompanying her younger sister Sheikh Rehana went to the Palace of Westminster to pay their last respect to the Queen.
Sheikh Hasina there observed one-minute silence as the mark of respect to the late Queen at the Westminster Hall of the Palace of Westminster where the body of Elizabeth II was kept lying-in-state.
On her arrival at the Westminster, representative of the British speaker received the Bangladesh prime minister and her younger sister.
Later, they were taken to the Lancaster House where the condolence book was opened.
Sheikh Hasina there wrote her condolence message in Bengali. The prime minister wrote, ‘I am expressing deep condolence on behalf of the people of Bangladesh, my family and my younger sister Sheikh Rehana.’
After that, the prime minister was taken to another room where she paid her tribute to the Queen in front of television.
In the Lancaster House, UK state minister for foreign affairs Vicky Ford received her.
The prime minister reminisced that she met the late Queen for eight or nine times and the Queen used to know her by her first name.
‘She was a motherly figure to me, I lost someone like my mother,’ she shared with the UK state minister for foreign affairs.
‘… it seems a guardian is gone (as she has died),’ she added.
Saida Muna Tasneem said that both the prime minster and her younger sister Sheikh Rehana saw the Queen in 1961 when she had visited the then East Pakistan (now Bangladesh).
Sheikh Hasina also said that the late Queen was like a global guardian and due to her death a vacuum has been created.
Bangladesh high commissioner said, Sheikh Rehana, who is also a British citizen, wrote in the condolence book that ‘she is the queen of our hearts and will always remain’.
