It was a real taste of Bangladeshi foods for foreign diplomats and tourists who gathered at the Bangladesh Food Festival at Café Bazar restaurant of Sonargaon Hotel in Dhaka on Saturday.

They savoured traditional dishes like dried fish, gilapi, halim, khitchury, tehari and biriani along with foods from different regions including the 'Mezbani' items of Chittagong.

The local foods attracted ambassadors, high commissioners and other diplomats based in Dhaka as well as a large number of foreign tourists.

Pan Pacific Sonargaon Hotel organised the daylong Bangladesh cuisine festival on the occasion of World Tourism Day 2003.

A display of Bangladeshi musical instruments at the hotel lobby added colour to the tourism day programmes, which also included cultural function.

State Minister for Civil Aviation and Tourism Mir Mohammad Nasiruddin formally inaugurated the function in the morning.

Speaking at the function, Nasiruddin reiterated the government's commitment towards promoting tourism industry in Bangladesh.

"We have already formed a task force and taken some other steps to develop the prospective sector," he said.

As a result, the state minister said, tourists from the Far East, especially from Japan, Korea and China, have started to visit Bangladesh for the first time.

The theme of this year's World Tourism Day was -- Tourism: A driving force for poverty alleviation, job creation and social harmony.

Sonargaon Hotel General Manager Grant J Gaskin, Bangladesh Parjatan Corporation Chairman Harunur Rashid Bhuiyan and Biman Bangladesh Airlines Managing Director Air Commodore (rtd) Lutfur Rahman also attended the function.