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The Jatiya Party chairman, Hussein Muhammad Ershad, on Monday called upon the ruling and the main opposition parties to sit for a dialogue to resolve the current political crisis.
   ‘The distance between the government and the opposition is increasing day by day and the country is moving towards confrontations,’ observed the former military dictator while speaking at the opening session of his party’s biannual national council at Paltan Maidan in the capital.
   The government and the opposition should sit for a dialogue to find a way out of the continuing stalemate in the parliament and outside, the chairman of his faction of the party said.
   Ershad opened the council session in the morning hoisting the national and the party flags and ritually releasing white pigeons and colourful balloons.
   Criticising the activities of the government and the main opposition, he said hartal can be the last weapon for a movement but political leaders must find out an alternative to hartal.
   He called upon his party leaders and workers to work together to secure the country from the politics of confrontation and ensure that the party also gets parliamentary seats in the next general elections outside greater Rangpur.
   The fisheries and livestock minister and BNP assistant secretary general, Abdullah Al Noman, Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal advisor ASM Abdur Rab, Sramik Krishak Janata Party president Abdul Kader Siddiq and JSD president Nur-e-Alam Ziku made fraternal speeches at the conference.
   Although invited, no leaders of the Awami League, Jamaat-e- Islami, the JSD faction led by Hasanul Haq Inu, and the left leaning camp were present at the JP programme.
   The Gano Forum, however, sent a representative to the council session, raising eyebrows of many of the party’s partners in the 11-party alliance.
   Bidisha Ershad, a presidium member of the party and second wife of Ershad, was conspicuous by her absence.
   Diplomatic representatives from different embassies attended the council and former prime minister of India IK Gujral and the Communist Party of China sent messages felicitating the conference.
   The JP secretary general, ABM Ruhul Amin Hawlader, presidium member Rawshan Ershad, the convenor of the council preparation committee and presidium member of the Jatiya Party, Kazi Zafar Ahmed, presidium member Ismail Hossain Bengal and city president Syed Abu Hossain Babla also spoke.
   Zafar, who has been out in the cold for close to a decade now, berated the main opposition Awami League for ‘trying to foil the parliament and seeking to gain power at any cost and through the shortest route’.
    Meanwhile, the opposition political leaders, who attended the conference, called upon Ershad to come forward to make a political combine of some opposition political parties to overcome the ongoing crises.
   Meanwhile, BNP leader and Minister Abdullah al-Noman called upon the main opposition party Awami League to join in parliament and urged JP parliament members to activate the parliament.
   Several thousand party delegates and representatives from 50 organisational districts took part at the council, the party source claimed.
   The law enforcing forces enforced strict security measures at and around the Paltan Maidan venue of the council.
   The councillors and the delegates are scheduled to elect the new party committee at the close of the conference.

Five thousand nine hundred and eleven civil cases were resolved through the alternative dispute resolution (ADR) system till January 31 this year since the ADR came into effect on July 1, 2003.
   The number of settled cases excludes those disposed of by the family courts and the financial loan courts. The minister for law, justice and parliamentary affairs, Moudud Ahmed, at a news conference held at the Ministry of Chittagong Hill Tracts Affairs, disclosed the figure.
   He said during the May 1, 2003 to January 31, 2005 period, 18,207 financial loan cases had been disposed of and Tk 1,760.38 crore recovered out of Tk 8,818.40 crore demanded. Of the settled cases, 2,189 were resolved through the system.
   About the recovery of Tk 1,760.38 crore, 19.96 per cent of the demanded, Moudud said, ‘It is a great success as recovery of such an amount had never been made in the last 30 years.’ There are 7,547 cases still pending with the financial loan courts.
   Featuring the success of the amended Financial Loan Court Act (Artho Rin Adalat Ain), he said that the number of pending cases in the financial loan court ‘is being reduced, as, in most cases, the borrowers are refunding the loans and they are resolving the disputes.

The Local Government Division in Dhaka Monday provided garbage trucks and vibratory road rollers to 97 municipalities to strengthen their capacities in garbage handling and road construction.
   The local government rural development and cooperatives minister, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, handed over the equipment to the municipality chairmen at the Dhaka City Corporation auditorium.
   The trucks and rollers were procured with government fund at a total cost of Tk 991.46 lakh, officials said.
   The state minister, Ziaul Haque Zia, LGED acting secretary, Abdus Samad Mollick, joint secretary, M Shafiqur Rahman and the Savar municipal chairman, Rifat Ullah, addressed the function with the chief executive of the city corporation, MA Momen, in the chair.
   ‘A number of projects are on the card for development of district and upazila towns. Resource for the projects will be collected from the residents of the localities,’ he said adding the government fund will not be sufficient for it.
   Mannan said the government has taken a project to prepare a master-plan for 100 third-category municipalities to prevent unplanned urbanisation.

A young vegetable trader was hacked to death at Deobhog Nagbari under Fatullah in Narayanganj Sunday night.
   The police said the assailants took Ujjal, 20, son of Nesar Ali, to the kitchen of a former union parishad member Khoda Bux at Nagbari at about 9:00pm and hacked him indiscriminately.
   Two people including a woman took the victim to a hospital where doctors pronounced him dead. The people who had brought him in however left the hospital immediately.
   The police picked up Shilpi and Iqbal in suspicion of involvement in the incident.

The chairman of Public Service Commission, professor Zinnatun Nesa Tahamida Begum, Monday handed over the commission’s annual report-2004 to the president, Iajuddin Ahmed at Bangabhaban.
   All members of the commission were present on the occasion.

The people of Phulbari in Dinajpur on Saturday expressed their concern over the exploration of coal there by Asia Energy, a UK company, without consulting with the local people.
   The people under the banner of Phulbari Community Council at a meeting demanded consultation with them prior to going for any mining project there.
   The council advisor, Danesh Ahmed, said the people of the area are in anxiety with their land and houses.

The government will establish 24 fire stations in the current financial year and is planning to set up another 71 at important places across the country to extinguish fire and safe public property.
   The state minister for home, Lutfozzaman Babar, said this Monday while inaugurating the Fire Service and Civil Defence Week-2005 at a function held at the Fire Service Training Complex in Dhaka in the afternoon.

Road communication between Chittagong and Dhaka remained disrupted for more than two hours after workers of the Hafiz Jute Mills had blocked the highway at Sitakunda on Monday.
   The police said the workers blocked the road in front of the mill at about 10:00am to press home their 10-point demands. The police opened the road at about noon.
   The police also charged at the workers with truncheons to disperse. Four were injured who were admitted to upazila health complex.
   The demands include immediate payment of dues and end to the efforts for jute mill privatisation.

The finance and planning minister, M Saifur Rahman, has said the government is accountable to only people of the country, not to the lenders as it came to power through their mandate.
   ‘The lenders have been providing us with economic cooperation. They could have a say on economic affairs, but not on political activities. They have to keep in mind that the people elected the government for their welfare,’ Saifur said while talking to the journalists at Zia International Airport Monday morning before leaving for Paris.
   The minister will attend a World Bank-sponsored meeting on development aid to be held on March 1 and 2.
   He will also attend separate meetings of the finance ministers of the different countries.
   Saifur said the ministers of different developing countries would share their experiences and ideas on on-going various development works in their countries.
   Besides, he said, the developing countries at the meeting would take initiatives to formulate a common strategy for how to utilise the aid received from the development partners efficiently and harmoniously.
   With the change in the world economy, the mode of aid flow has also been changing, the minister said.
   ‘The trend of the multilateral aid flow is on increase against the decline in bilateral one, which has created a new problem as the partners of the multilateral-aided projects are giving various conditions to the process of the project implementation. These conditions are difficult to implement.’
   Turning the Washington meeting of the representatives from the lenders held last week, Saifur said it could produce nothing. Holding of such meeting without informing Bangladesh was not a right thing, he added.
   ‘It could not be happened that one would take measures against me without informing me properly.’
   The minister said after the meeting the representatives of the lenders called on him and they acknowledged that they did not go to the right way.
   Saifur said the lenders at separate meetings on Sunday assured him of continuing their cooperation to Bangladesh in its development. Even they proposed for the financial support for the Padma Bridge, he said.
   He said holding of a yearly meeting with the Bangladesh Development Partners is not an essential one.

The High Court on Monday decided to scrutinise the legality of Shahudul Huq’s holding the office of the inspector general of police after being convicted and fined in a contempt of court charge.
   The bench of Justice Md Joynul Abedin and Justice Miftahuddin Chowdhury also rejected Shahudul’s claim that the case had lost its cause of action after his removal from the office and remittance of his fine made by the president.
   ‘… Still the question of legality of his holding the office after conviction has to be scrutinised,’ observed the court.
   A High Court bench of Justice MA Matin and Justice Syed Refat Ahmed on March 22, 2004 issued a rule nisi on Shahudul asking him to explain the legality of his holding office after the same bench on January 27 found him guilty of gross misconduct in a contempt case. The court fined him Tk 2,000, in default to suffer one month imprisonment.
   The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court on December 7, 2004 dismissed an appeal against the High Court judgement.
   A suomotto rule was earlier issued against Shahudul on November 11, 2003 for his written comments in reply to certain queries about a contempt case against five traffic policemen.
   The High Court on June 30, 2003 in a rule fined three traffic policemen and acquitted two others of the contempt charge — stopping the car of a judge to let through a police car, which was far behind, resulting in traffic congestion.
   In his written reply to the High Court, Shahudul claimed that the judge had himself become ‘liable to be prosecuted under the criminal law on charges of wrongful confinement, abetment, prejudicial act, obstructing public servant in discharging public functions and threatening a public servant with issuing the rule’.

The government has fixed call charges of Teletalk, the mobile phone service of the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board, the minister for telecommunications, Aminul Haque, said in Jatiya Sangsad Monday.
   The mobile-to-mobile zonal call charge for postpaid service has been fixed at Tk 3 a minute during peak hours and Tk 2 a minute during off-peak hours.
   The charge for inter-zonal mobile-to-mobile calls has been fixed at Tk 5 for peak hours and Tk 4 for off-peak hours.
   For prepaid nationwide service, the charge has been fixed at Tk 4 a minute for peak hours and Tk 2.60 for off-peak hours. BTTB charges will be added to mobile-to-landline calls.
   Clients will need to pay Tk 1 for each short message service text, Tk 1 a minute for voice message system, Tk 1.20 for an e-mail, Tk 1 for push-pull service and Tk 10 for 500kb general packet radio service, a packet-linked technology that enables high-speed wireless internet and other data communications.
   The call charges were fixed considering the market situation and reviewing other relevant matters, the minister said, answering a question from a treasury bench member, Dr Mohammad Rustam Ali Faraji.
   He said call charge of the Teletalk might be re-fixed at times.
   Replying to another question, the minister said Bangladesh would be connected to the submarine cable network by October.

Former Khulna additional police superintendent Mofazzel Hossain was on Monday placed on a three-day remand in the case of attempt to murder the Khulna-based Jugantar correspondent, Dip Azad.
   Khulna metropolitan magistrate Atiqul Haque granted the remand, rejecting a bail prayer.
   The police and court sources said the Khulna police brought Mofazzel Hossain from Dhaka to Khulna Saturday evening and sought a seven-day remand for him in the case.
   Witnesses said before going into the courtroom Monday noon, Mofazzel spoke with the newsmen and photographers when he claimed himself to be a victim of a conspiracy.
   Mofazzel claimed he did not know Azad, never met him and never talked with him over telephone. ‘It is not possible to pick up a quarrel with someone who I do not know.’
   He protested his innocence and said no police officer could match his performance against the activists of the underground Janajuddha and Purba Banglar Communist Party. He said he was ready to accept punishment if proved guilty.

The Juba League, the Awami League’s youth front, on Monday held rallies and brought out processions at different parts of the country protesting against Saturday’s police ‘atrocities’ on the party men.
   At least 20 Juba League activists, including its general secretary, Mirza Azam MP, were injured in the police action in front of the party’s central office on the Bangabandhu Avenue.
   As part of the countrywide programme, Juba League organised a rally in front of its central office with party chairman Jahangir Kabir Nanok in the chair. The Awami League central leaders Abdul Jalil, Obaidul Kader and Abdul Mannan addressed it.

The American ambassador, Harry K Thomas, dismissed as ‘mistaken’ a wire service report that the US and Bangladesh governments agreed upon the opening of an office of Federal Bureau of Investigation in Bangladesh.
   He also said discussion was going on about the terms of reference for useful assistance from the FBI in the investigation of the killing of the former finance minister, SAMS Kibria.
   He said the TOR would define the scope of activities of the US law-enforcement consultants to enhance the possibility that their participation in the investigation becomes meaningful.