Allegation of US role in BD regime change preposterous: Sullivan

US national security adviser Jake Sullivan has called perceptions and allegations of American role behind the street protests and regime change in Bangladesh as "preposterous" and claimed that senior Indian officials don't believe that the US was behind events in Dhaka either.

Acknowledging the aftermath of the allegations implicating an Indian government official in an assassination plot of an American citizen as a "bump" in the relationship, Sullivan said that India recently briefed the US on the work of the enquiry committee set up on the issue, and the work of seeking "full accounting and accountability" will continue till the end of the Joe Biden administration on January 20 and even beyond that. But, he added, the manner in which the two countries had managed the issue reflected the "maturity and depth of the bilateral relationship".

Speaking to a select group of reporters in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Friday morning eastern time, Sullivan spoke about the US-India relationship as a highlight of the Biden administration's legacy, with a "step change" in the trust that both shared and the strategic investment that they had made in each other. Amid concerns that the incoming Donald Trump administration will focus on onshoring rather than friendshoring, affecting the American investment and co-production efforts in India and the work under the initiative on critical and emerging technology (iCET), Sullivan said that he believed the intertwining of the "defence industrial base" of both countries was in American interest and the make in India and made in America were complementary, Hindustan Times has said.