Ambassador Tariq Ahmad Karim is currently Director of the Centre for Bay of Bengal Studies at the Independent University, Bangladesh, since December 2020. He is concurrently Visiting Dis unguished Research Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS) at the National University of Singapore from December 2022 to December 2025. Ambassador Karim is a member of the Advisory Board of the National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR) of Seattle and Washington DC., and Honorary Adviser Emeritus to Commos Foundation, Dhaka. Between 2014 and 2020, he was Advisory Consultant for South Asia Regional Integration & Engagement to the World Bank as well as Strategic Adviser to its South Asia Water Initiative from 2014 until 2020. He was Distinguished Fellow at the Vivekananda lemational Foundation (VIF), New Delhi, from 2015 to 2017. A career diplomat who joined the Foreign Service of erstwhile Pakistan in 1967 he served, notably, as High Commissioner to India (with the penonal rank and status of a Minister of State), Ambassador to the United States, High Commissioner to South Africa, and Ambassador to Int. At the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Bangladesh, he served notably Alditotial Foreign Secretary for South Asia and SAARC (1995-1997). and as Director General for United Nations & Economic Affairs, and con- currently Policy Planning & Research Anbasador Karim was Distinguished International Executive in Mindence (1999-2000) at the University of Maryland. Wah his expertise in the structure of government institutions, diplomacy and negotiation, compulsions can have a negative fallout for everyone trying to engage in such subregional cooperation, He then examines the possibility of subregional cooperation of the BBIN countries linking eastwards within BIMSTEC and beyond, and ite possibilities of success. In his prognosis of the future, he posits on some of the things that have prevented the process of coming together and suggests how they need to be addressed.