Bangla army chief coming to India

JYOTI MALHOTRA

New Delhi, June 22, 2007 : India and Bangladesh are poised to take a great leap forward in their relations, with Foreign Secretary Shivshanker Menon travelling to Dhaka early next week and Bangladesh army chief confirming plans to visit India in late August.

The Bangladesh army chief, Gen. Moeen U. Ahmed, the power behind the current caretaker government of Fakhruddin Ahmed, will be in New Delhi and Kolkata from August 22-26, government sources said.

The confirmation of the Bangladesh army chief’s visit is a reflection of New Delhi’s pragmatism vis-à-vis its key eastern neighbour, with whom it wants to end the bitterness of the recent past and break new ground.

In fact, Menon is also likely to meet the army chief in Dhaka, apart from caretaker president Fakhruddin Ahmed, foreign adviser Iftikhar Chowdhury and his counterparts in the Bangladesh foreign office.

Sources said Menon hopes to make a new beginning by excising old sores, such as the matter of the enclaves that has been pending since the independence of Bangladesh in 1971. Both sides had recently decided to carry out a joint survey to look into this matter.

Significantly, India and Bangladesh have over the last couple of months been exchanging information on terrorists who have slipped into each other’s country. A recent crackdown in West Bengal and even in Calcutta on Bangladeshi terrorists has done much to boost confidence in Dhaka to unveil its own anti-ULFA crackdown at home.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has often been quoted saying that ``India will do business with whoever is in power’’, and although the PM’s quote was made in the context of Musharraf’s Pakistan, government sources said it equally applied to Bangladesh.

In fact, Foreign Office officials have usually insisted that ``Bangladesh is not Pakistan, and that the people there are much more alive to democratic norms.’’

This will be Gen. Moeen Ahmed’s first visit to India. He is a `mukti-joddha’ or freedom-fighter, that is, he belongs to that elite and much-honoured group of Bangladeshis who participated in the freedom struggle against Pakistan in 1971.

Naturally, then, the Bangladesh army chief will be received with full honours, both in New Delhi and Kolkata.

The army’s takeover of Bangladesh had been viewed with some caution in New Delhi when it occurred in January, but the fact that it has since wielded a very tough broom on corruption and religious fundamentalism, has brought much cheer both at home and in India.

The arrest of Tarique Rahman, son of former PM Khaleda Zia, has been a high point of the soft army rule in Bangladesh, as has been the hanging of six extremists like Bangla Bhai of the Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh group, which had spread terror in the eastern region. Bangladesh sources claimed tax evaders had paid up at least Rs 25,000 crores into the government kitty.

India’s ambassador in Dhaka Pinak Chakraborty has been in close touch with the Army chief, meeting him for the first time on the eve of Foreign minister Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Dhaka in February.

It was here that the Sealdah-Joydebpur train service, pending for the last 15 years, was revived. Sources said the tracks are ready on the Bangladesh side and that Indian Railways is almost ready with its own upgradation.

The train service may now be inaugurated in August, on the eve of Gen. Moeen Ahmed’s visit to India.

ENDS