Shawdesh Desk:

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina on Friday joined the welcome ceremony of 18th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) at Baku Congress Centre in the Azerbaijan capital of Baku.

Afterward, Sheikh Hasina will join Working Luncheon for heads of the delegation at the Luncheon Hall of the centre and the Plenary Session.

In the evening, the prime minister will attend the official reception to be hosted by Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev at Heydar Aliyev Center.

On Saturday, Sheikh Hasina will join the Plenary Session, the Working Luncheon for the heads of delegation and the Closing Ceremony of the summit.

She will attend a dinner to be hosted at Hilton Baku by the Bangladesh Ambassador to Turkey who is concurrently accredited to Azerbaijan.

On the sidelines of the NAM Summit, the prime minister is expected to meet a number of heads of state or government, foreign ministry sources said.

Earlier, the premier reached Baku on Thursday night on a four-day official visit to Azerbaijan to attend the summit.

Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Azerbaijan Ali Javad Oglu Ahmadov and Bangladesh Ambassador to Turkey M Allama Siddiki, who is concurrently accredited to Azerbaijan, received the premier at the airport.

After the official welcome function at the airport, a ceremonial motorcade later escorted the prime minister to Hotel Hilton Baku, where she will be staying during her tour to Azerbaijan.

Concluding her four-day visit to Azerbaijan, the prime minister is scheduled to depart from Baku Heydar Aliyev International Airport for home by a Biman Bangladesh Airlines’ special flight at 11 am local time on Sunday.

The flight is scheduled to reach Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka at 7:45 pm (BST) the same day.

The NAM is a forum of 120 developing world states that are not formally aligned with or against any major power bloc. After the United Nations, it is the largest grouping of states worldwide.

Drawing on the principles agreed at the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955, the NAM was established in 1961 in Belgrade, Yugoslavia through an initiative of the then Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and ex-Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito.

Venezuela’s Margarita Island hosted the 17th NAM Summit in 2016. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro is the current chairperson of the NAM.