Pakistan denied airspace permission to a Russian flight carrying uranium shipment for Bangladesh’s Rooppur Nuclear Power Plant, citing “technical issues.”
The disruption of the uranium transport to Rooppur was confirmed by Bangladesh’s minister for science and technology, Faqir Mahbub Anam.
In a clarification released on Tuesday, the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka said that Islamabad “maintains an unwavering commitment to international diplomatic norms and processes all requests for diplomatic flight and overflight clearances within a standardised, predictable timeframe, strictly in accordance with our established regulatory guidelines and civil aviation protocols.”
It called for not attaching “undue significance to reports or narratives that may seek to misplace it to undermine our bilateral relations. In a statement, Rosatom said the delivery of nuclear fuel for unit-2 would begin in October and continue through December this year, with the supplies to be completed by the end of December. The nuclear fuel delivery for unit-1 of the power plant was completed in 2023.
“With regard to the reports being quoted, the matter appears to relate to technical and procedural arrangements concerning flight routing and airspace permissions, which can occasionally require coordination among the relevant aviation and other authorities and may result in adjustments to flight schedules,” it added, according to ANI. The Pakistan High Commission further said that the country “attaches high importance to its relations with Bangladesh”, while urging for the matter to be viewed in a technical context only. Representatives from Rosatom’s PR agency told The Daily Star that nuclear fuel shipments for the second unit would resume in October via an alternative route. “The remaining fuel batches bound for Bangladesh will arrive by December across seven separate cargo flights,” the spokesperson said.
