Foreign Minister Dr AK Abdul Momen on Tuesday expressed displeasure over the Palestine ambassador’s disapproving comments regarding a change in Bangladesh e-passport.

“This is irrelevant to me, totally irrelevant,” he told reporters when his comment was sought on Palestine Ambassador Yousef SY Ramadan’s criticism of the removal of words – “except Israel”- from Bangladesh e-passports.

Dr Momen said Bangladesh maintains its foreign policy on its own way and it is totally irrelevant which ambassador says what.

“We’re a sovereign country. We’ll decide what we’ll do or not,” said the Foreign Minister after attending a programme at Foreign Service Academy.

  Ambassador Ramadan earlier called Dhaka’s decision as “unacceptable.”

“I’m being frank with you about my feeling that it is unacceptable,” he told a small group of reporters at his office on Monday.

Bangladesh officials were surprised with Ramadan’s reaction even though the Ministry of Foreign Affairs clarified on Sunday that there has been no change in the country’s Israel policy and Bangladeshi citizens are still barred from visiting Israel.

The Ambassador, however, said they sincerely hope that Bangladesh will revise this decision and keep this sentence in the passport – “except Israel” - because this also represents a very good support to the people of Palestine.

The envoy said they can only request the government to revise the decision and they hope Bangladesh will do that.

Ambassador Ramadan said the change in passport was received by Israel like it was a reward to them.

Foreign Minister Dr Momen on Sunday told UNB that there has been no change in Bangladesh's position towards Israel as it still does not recognise Israel.

He said removing the words like valid for travelling except Israel in the new passport does not mean that there has been a change in Bangladesh’s position.

The ban on travel of Bangladeshi passport holders to Israel remains unchanged.

The confusion appears to have emanated from the new booklets of E-passports which do not contain the observation “all countries except Israel”.

The removal of the observation has been done to maintain international standards of Bangladeshi e-passports and does not imply any change of Bangladesh’s foreign policy towards the Middle East, the government said.