US President Bill Clinton will be visiting Bangladesh for a day on March 25, it was officially announced in Dhaka yesterday.

A spokesman of the foreign ministry told reporters yesterday afternoon that "at the invitation of the Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. the President of the United States William Jefferson Clinton will be visiting Bangladesh on March 25."

“This will be the first ever visit of a US President to Bangladesh. The US president was looking forward to laying the groundwork for broadening and strengthening the relationship with Bangladesh during the trip."

A similar announcement was due to be made from the State Department in Washington about the impending visit of Clinton. The US president had expressed his desire to visit Bangladesh much earlier but later postponed the tour.

The foreign ministry spokesman said "at this point of time" he did not have any other details about the visit.

A report from New Delhi stated that the US President will pay a five-day official visit to India beginning on March 20

at the invitation of Indian President K R Narayanan.

It could not be known whether the President would be accompanied by First Lady Hillary Clinton.

Bill Richardson who is a close friend of the US President and now Energy Secretary said in Dhaka during a trip last year that the US President would like to visit Bangladesh because "this is a country that is making progress. It is a country where tremendous strides have been made about elimination of the child labour and some excellent work on micro-credit by the NGOs like Grameen Bank."

"He will particularly like to come to Bangladesh because of the warm reception given to First Lady Hillary Clinton." Richardson had said.