Prime Minister Manmohan Singh signed a raft of heralded agreements during a visit to Dhaka this month but he did not seal a deal on the Teesta River due to opposition from the chief minister of India's West Bengal state.
Hasina, on a visit to New York to attend the UN General Assembly, said that Bangladesh and India have nonetheless developed an interim plan on sharing water. Bangladesh's north has suffered from drought.
"I'm not that much disappointed because I feel that we can solve this problem bilaterally and I'm very much optimistic about it," she said at the Asia Society. Hasina and Singh signed other deals to improve sometimes uneasy relations, with India granting duty-free access to 46 Bangladeshi textile items and the countries agreeing to demarcate their 4,000-kilometer border.
Hasina, whose Awami League is historically seen as more sympathetic than the arch-rival Bangladesh Nationalist Party to India, said that she has also supported a "very good relationship" with Pakistan.
"We try to improve our relationship with every country and especially every neighboring country," she said. "Who is our main enemy? Our main enemy is poverty." Hasina is the daughter of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, who led Bangladesh to independence from Pakistan in 1971. The government says that up to three million people died in the independence war, many killed by Bangladeshis who collaborated with Pakistani forces.