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Published : 02 May 2018, 07:41 PM
His family said he died in his sleep at their home at Rockville near Washington, DC on Sunday afternoon.
His body will be laid to rest at Parklawn Memorial Gardens in Rockville after a Namaz-e-Janaza or funeral prayers at Muslim Community Center on New Hampshire Avenue at 11:30am on Wednesday, an expatriate Bangladeshi said quoting his son Riaz Husain.
He was predeceased by his wife ‘Uzra’, the daughter of late chief justice Amin Ahmed, and is survived by three sons and as many grandchildren, Riaz wrote in an obituary.
Born in 1924, Husain obtained his BA (Honours) and MA in Economics from the Dhaka University and postgraduate degree in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science.
He joined the Pakistan Foreign Service as a member of the first regular batch in 1949 and served in different capacities in the Pakistan diplomatic missions in India, the Netherlands, UK and Thailand.
There were quite a few Bengali diplomats in the Pakistan foreign service who opposed Bangladesh's independence and yet went on to serve in Bangladesh.
Husain was a member of the delegation led by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto to Beijing in November 1971 to seek Chinese support for Pakistan against Bangladesh's War of Liberation.
A career diplomat, Husain was appointed foreign secretary of Bangladesh on Nov 15, 1975 after the political landscape changed following the assassination of founding father Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman.
He was the foreign secretary until September 1978.
He was appointed ambassador to the United States where he served until he resigned in 1982 following another changeover in Bangladesh’s politics.
Husain served the Sadharan Bima Corporation from 1995 to 1996 as chairman.
He joined Grameen Bank as its chairman in 2002.
A spokesperson for the Yunus Center, Lamiya Morshed, said Husain was a former chairman of Grameen Bank and a “dear friend” of Mohammad Yunus.
“I am deeply saddened to hear the news of the demise of Mr Tabarak Husain, former chairman of Grameen Bank and a dear friend to me,” Yunus said in a statement.
