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A government move to grant legal immunity to the World Bank is detrimental to the political and economic interests of the country and the citizens believing in national sovereignty and uninterrupted economic growth should, therefore, put up serious resistance against the move.
   The observation was made by different civil society groups representing economists, lawyers, journalists, development activists, industrial workers, human rights activists and peasant groups on Saturday at a seminar that came to consensus that the International Financial Organisations (Amendment) Bill providing legal immunity to the World Bank be withdrawn immediately.
   The Alliance against World Bank Immunity, a conglomeration of more than 40 organisations, organised the seminar — ‘Immunity for the World Bank: In the Perspective of Development and Rights’ — at the auditorium of the Local Government Engineering Department. New Age and Sangbad participated as media partners of the campaign.
   The seminar was organised against the backdrop of the recent approval of a draft bill by the parliamentary standing committee on the finance ministry. The bill is now ready to be placed in the parliament.
   The speakers pointed out at the seminar that the World Bank does not enjoy institutional immunity from judicial proceedings in any country of its operations and its mother law does not permit such immunity.
   They observed that the lending agency is neither a diplomatic institution nor a development agency, rather it is a financial institution and thus it cannot claim institutional immunity from judicial proceedings, the seminar observed.
   The executive editor of New Age, Nurul Kabir, while moderating the programme, said New Age, a newspaper committed to the secular democratic politics of rights, equity and justice, finds it important to express solidarity with the democratic campaign against the imposition of politically driven economic prescriptions by the international lending agencies including the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, on countries like Bangladesh.
   ‘One cannot fight for democracy without fighting against the World Bank and the IMF, which stand in the way of national sovereignty at the political level and unhindered growth at the economic level,’ he said.
   The seminar was addressed by economist Anu Muhammad, researcher and lawyer Salimullah Khan, economist Sharif-e-Kafi, lawyer Mizanur Rahman Apel, development activists Aminur Rahman, Arup Rahee of Lokoj, AFM Imamuddin, Mohammad Zakaria of Action Aid and Swapan Bhuiyan and Shamima Nasrin of Garments Workers’ Federation.
   There is a myth about the World Bank as a development institution, which is accountable to its members, said Anu.
   He said the lending agency is a corporate body of the United States. ‘It is merely an extension of the US Treasury Department and its president is always appointed by the United States.’
   Anu said there was a direct link between wars, destruction, and death, and the lending agency. He pointed out that Robert McNamara, dubbed as a champion of development, was the US defence secretary during the Vietnam War.
   The next president, he pointed out, was the deputy defence secretary during the Iraq invasion.
   The World Bank is in no way a development organisation, it rather works as an agent for commercial interests of the developed world, he said. ‘No country has so far achieved economic development following the lending agency’s prescriptions and legal immunity would provide it with absolute powers to propagate their programmes of destruction.’
   He said it is precisely due to the bank’s prescription that Bangladesh has to purchase natural gas from international oil companies at a high rate and that too in foreign currency. ‘We buy gas at a rate Tk 150 per unit, while the production cost should not be more than Tk 30.’
   Considering that it might have to face legal consequences for its crimes, the World Bank is rightly anxious to get legal immunity, Anu said. ‘But even such immunity would not be able to protect the bank from public wrath. It will be compelled to stand before people’s court.’
   Salimullah contested the traditional concepts of development. ‘We must rid ourselves of the phantoms of development that the bank has implanted.’
   In his keynote paper, Rezaul said, ‘The proposed immunity is contradictory to our natural right to justice as citizens according to the constitution of Bangladesh.’
   Ahmed Swapan Mahmud, in his keynote paper, explained the development perspectives saying the bank’s prescriptions did not help any country to achieve economic development.
   Jakir, executive director of the Innovators and also an assistant professor of Bangladesh Studies of Rajshahi University, in his keynote paper, said, ‘The immunity bill must be withdrawn from parliament and the World Bank must face legal consequences for the detrimental impacts of its programmes have had.’
   Aminur said the immunity would harm people’s basic right to go for legal action against the bank.
   If the government gives the immunity, the lending agency will use Bangladesh as an example of precedence and compel other poor nations to give it immunity as well, he said.
   Sharif-e-Kafi said, ‘We must remember that most of the loans from the lending agency is not used for development.
   There are rather used to run the government, pay for imports and so on.’
   He said a negligible portion of those loans is actually used in development work or projects.
   Apel quoted a letter between two ministers of the government that categorically clarifies that a senior legal adviser of the World Bank had finalised the draft bill at a meeting with a minister.
   He added that the first draft was not satisfactory to the bank and its immunity had been made more concrete with some additions to the proposed bill.
   Shamima Nasrin, representing the Federation of Garment Workers, said, ‘We cannot let the bill pass. The bank must be accountable for the miseries of the thousands of workers it propagated.’
   She called for an all out movement demanding that the government withdraw the bill from parliament.
   The Alliance against World Bank Immunity will hold a rally at the National Press Club the day after the bill is passed and demonstration rallies from May 15 to 18 at Shahbagh at 3:00pm every day protesting against the bill.
   The bill titled ‘The International Financial Organisations (Amendment) Act, 2004’ was placed in parliament in October amid widespread criticism by the opposition political parties, civil society and rights groups.
   The executive editor of Sangbad, Manzurul Ahsan Bulbul, delivered introductory remarks at the seminar. He said the proposal to provide immunity from the legal process is inconsistent with the rule of law that does not allow extra privileges to any party.

Some parliamentarians on Saturday asked the government to give the poverty reduction strategy paper a human face.
   They expressed doubt about implementation of the PRSP (a World Bank-backed plan to reduce poverty), which, in their view, would be marred and hampered by ‘preconditions’ imposed by the multilateral lending agencies.
   They demanded that the PRSP should be discussed at length in the parliament and be ratified by the legislators.
   ‘The human aspect must prevail over anything in the PRSP,’ said the speaker of Jatiya Sangsad, Muhammad Jamiruddin Sircar, while addressing a workshop arranged to consult members of the present parliament on Saturday. ‘We need a people-oriented PRSP so that it can be used to solve the problems of the common people.’
   The workshop on ‘Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper: the Parliamentarians’ Perspective’ was jointly organised by the Strengthening Parliamentary Democracy Project of Sangsad and the UNDP.
   The speaker inaugurated the workshop which was addressed by Khandakar Delwar Hossain, chief whip of Sangsad, Abdus Shaheed, chief whip of the opposition, Abdul Mannan MP, chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on the ministry of agriculture, Muhammad Faruque Khan MP of the Awami League, Professor Wahid Uddin Mahmud, UN resident coordinator Jorgen Lissner, Planning Commission’s member Quazi Mesbahuddin Ahmed, and Power and Participation Research Centre’s executive chairman Hossain Zillur Rahman.
   The chairman of the parliamentary standing committee on public undertakings, Abdul Alim, moderated the business session, and the inaugural session was presided over by Jatiya Sangsad’s secretary Md Omar Faruque Khan.
   Jamiruddin said poverty reduction strategies from the viewpoints of scholars, lenders, bureaucrats and NGOs are different from the viewpoints of parliamentarians, who are representing people at the grassroots level. ‘The extent and depth of poverty can be properly identified and addressed by MPs who can reach every corner of the country.’
   He said the lenders try to solve the problems through ‘pen or pencil and a sheet of paper’.
   ‘The funds given to NGOs have not been properly utilised,’ he said, adding that half of the NGO funds had been ‘eaten up’.
   The bureaucracy works with ‘its core people’ only, the speaker said.
   He added that the lenders’ money should go through the proper channels to the unemployed people in the remote areas.
   Delwar said the government may not be able to implement the PRSP properly unless the lending countries and institutions, especially the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, backtrack from imposing ‘preconditions’ before funding.
   Without naming any country, the chief whip said, ‘Killing people by imposing war and good words to eradicate poverty cannot go together.’
   Expressing doubt about the success of the PRSP, Shaheed warned that the PRSP would suffer the same fate as the Anti-Corruption Commission, which is becoming inactive and useless as the government is unwilling to strengthen it. ‘No strategy will work if we do not check corruption and strengthen the parliamentary committee system.’
   Mannan, a BNP MP from the Dhaka-2 constituency, said, ‘The [draft] PRSP is still a paper tiger and the I-PRSP was a paper tiger in the making.’
   Well-fed theoreticians, academicians and economists view poverty from their own angle, but people suffering from extreme deprivation such as starvation view it from another angle, he said.
   Mannan, a former state minister, said relevant laws needed to be enacted in parliament for the reforms that will facilitate implementation of the PRSP.
   He also suggested that there should be effective synchronisation of the national budget, the World Bank-backed PRSP and UN-backed millennium development goals.
   Faruque blamed the government for violating the basic principle of people’s participation in the preparation process of the PRSP. ‘It will only be successfully implemented if it is free of corruption and efficiently handled.’
   He expressed doubt about implementation of the PRSP by the present government who have allowed the bureaucracy, which is ‘inefficient and corrupt’, to be the ‘prime mover’ of PRSP.
   Mahbubur Rahman, a BNP MP from Dinajpur, said, ‘We [MPs] have not been consulted in the preparation process of the PRSP.’
   Wahiduddin Mahmud said the PRSP would be unrealistic if it is not enriched by political commitment and experience from the grassroots levels gathered by the MPs.
   He also emphasised the need for ensuring the quality of projects instead of going for volume of projects. ‘The political constituency-based projects can not be used as tools to politically reward anybody.’
   Jorgen Lissner said every party in the parliament can create its own PRSP paper, but they may not necessarily reach a consensus on the strategies. ‘A good debate can be created within the parties and among the parties in parliament as we need to hear the opinions of all parties,’ he said.
   Responding to the MPs’ repeated demand for an extensive consultation with them on the PRSP, the planning ministry and UNDP officials have agreed to hold a daylong consultation meeting soon.

Belying the fears of fall in sales, Bangladesh’s garment exports to the US market in the first quarter saw a sharp rise in the most sensitive cotton categories despite stiff competition from cheaper exports from China.
   Statistics released by the US commerce department showed that during the January-March period, apparel exports from Bangladesh rose by 18.5 per cent in volume, with March seeing an impressive 39 per cent growth, and only trailing behind China, Mexico and Honduras.
   Shipments from India jumped up by 29 per cent in the January-March period with a 35 per cent surge in March, while exports by Indonesia and Pakistan were up by 24 per cent in the same month.
   US official data showed that value of Bangladeshi exports reached $624 million in February, posting a 35 per cent jump over $462 million in the same month last year.
   In March the exports were worth $680 million, up from $627 million in March 2004.
   In cotton knit shirts, US import growth from Bangladesh ranged between 62 and 174 per cent in different
   categories, while increases in cotton trousers were between 44 to 94 per cent, according to a textile import monitoring agency.
   US market analysts have observed that China’s export boom in the post-MFA period has not depressed Bangladesh’s sales so far.
   They opined that US threats of applying safeguard measures against Chinese products may have boosted US orders to Bangladeshi suppliers.
   The latest figures are a clear sign that clothing exports remained very strong in the first quarter. Apparels usually account for 78 per cent of Bangladesh’s total export revenue.
   The BGMEA president, Annisul Haque, said they are yet to get the report on increased export from Bangladesh in three months after the expiry of textile quotas in January 2005. ‘We will see the report and check it,’ he said.

The government is firm on implementing the new pay scale for public servants despite lending agencies warning about adverse impact on the economy, said the finance and planning minister, M Saifur Rahman.
   He said the cabinet in its weekly meeting on Monday would approve the pay scale which will require the government an additional spending of Tk 6,712 crore every year.
   ‘I have told them that it will be within our financial capacity,’ Saifur told journalists at Zia International Airport
   on Saturday on his return from Washington, report agencies.
   Referring to his meetings with World Bank and International Monetary Fund top brasses in the US capital, he said the lending agencies had suggested cautious implementation of the pay scale to avert pressure on inflation.
   ‘Although they have strong reservations about the new pay scale, the government is pledge-bound to begin its implementation from this month,’ he added.
   He also expressed optimism about immediate release of the fourth instalment of the IMF’s $490 million poverty reduction and growth facility scheme, whose disbursement was due in December but stalled for slow progress in pledged reforms in banking sector.
   The fourth instalment of $70 million will be made available soon, Saifur informed.
   He returned home ending a 12-day visit to Turkey and the United States, attending high-profile meetings with global finance and trade officials.
   He attended the Asian Development Bank’s annual meeting in Istanbul, and held talks with WB, IMF and USAID chiefs in Washington.
    Briefing newsmen on the outcomes of the meetings, Saifur said he had wide-ranging discussions with WB president-designate Paul Wolfowitz, IMF managing director Rodrigo de Rato and USAID administrator Andrew Natsios.
   All of them hailed Bangladesh for attaining macro-economic stability, disaster management capacity and improving the law and order situation, he claimed.
   The IMF has assured that the fourth instalment will be released soon, Saifur Rahman informed.
   But it suggested expediting the ongoing reform programmes in banking, revenue and expenditure management sectors.
   The managing director of the IMF stressed that the government should take the inflation rate into account.
   In Istanbul, Saifur attended the South Asian Finance Ministers’ meeting discussing cooperation issues among
   the nations of this region in the sidelines of the ADB meeting.
   He had also talks with US lawmakers in Washington on the passage of a bill aimed at giving duty-free access to Bangladesh and some other LDCs.

The Awami League president, Sheikh Hasina, on Saturday demanded judicial inquiry into all extra-judicial killings.
   ‘All the citizens have the constitutional rights to take shelter under the law. But none gets this opportunity under the alliance government,’ Hasina said. ‘The alliance government is violating the constitution in every step. We demand judicial inquiry into all extra-judicial killings.’
   The leader of the opposition in parliament made the remarks at a meeting with the Ganatantrik Teachers Forum of Bangladesh Agricultural University at the Dhanmondi office of the Awami League.
   Criticising the government for its ‘misrule’, Hasina alleged that the ‘BNP-Jamaat alliance government’ had already destroyed the country’s image through violating human rights, repressing women and journalists, and extra-judicial killings by RAB.
   She alleged that the government had politicised every sector of the administration and destroyed the education and judiciary systems.
   The AL chief urged the countrymen to be united to force the government to step down.
   Hasina claimed that the country was now passing through a ‘severe crisis’ and all the pro-liberation forces, open-minded progressive and democratic forces must be united to free the nation from the clutches of ‘misrule’ of the alliance government.

The High Court on Saturday issued a rule nisi on the government to show cause within eight weeks why it would not be directed to establish a national human rights commission for protecting the people’s rights.
   A High Court bench of Justice Shah Abu Nayeem Mominur Rahman and Justice Mainul Islam Chowdhury passed the order after hearing a writ petition filed as a public interest litigation by three lawyers of the Supreme Court — Abdul Momin Chowdhury, KM Zabir and Zahirul Islam.
   Momen Chowdhury told the court that establishment of a human rights commission was indispensable for protection of the human rights guaranteed in the constitution, prevention of corruption and alleviation of poverty.
   The petitioner contended that the hapless people of Bangladesh are subjected to injustice and oppression, so there must be some institution to attend to their sufferings if their human rights are violated.
   The petitioner recalled that the Bangladesh Nationalist Party had publicly promised, in its last election manifesto, to establish a human rights commission. As such it is the government’s obligation and responsibility to implement its election pledge, he added.
   A bill for enacting a law to establish an independent Commission of Human Rights is gathering dust in the Cabinet Division, as the government has been sitting on the file for 20 months.
   The Cabinet Committee on Human Rights Commission on January 22, 2004 gave its approval to the Human Rights Protection Bill and sent it to the Cabinet Division to place it before the cabinet for final approval.
   The bill is, however, yet to be placed before the cabinet.
   The petitioners themselves moved the petition before the court. Assistant attorney general Zaman Akter Bulbul appeared for the government.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has recommended an additional $50 billion be set aside to fund US military operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and the US-declared global war on terrorism.
   The proposed new war spending for fiscal 2006, which starts October 1, would push the cost of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq and its aftermath toward $250 billion.
   Before the invasion, then-White House economic adviser, Lawrence Lindsey, said a conflict with Iraq could cost $100 billion to $200 billion. He was derided by administration colleagues and lost his job in December 2002.
   The recommendation for fresh emergency spending was sent to the full Senate on Thursday night as part of a bill that also would authorise $441.6 billion in regular defence spending in fiscal 2006, a 3.1 per cent real increase over the sum authorised by Congress last year.
   Three days ago, Congress gave final approval for an $82 billion emergency war-spending bill, of which about $76 billion would go to fighting the war.
   Even with such a large emergency funding measure, Pentagon officials have said more money would be needed as early as October.
   The White House Office of Management and Budget said it had not sought the additional $50 billion recommended by the Armed Services Committee.
   The new measure had bipartisan support. It is expected to be taken up by the full Senate as early as the end of this month. Once passed by the Senate, it needs to be reconciled with the House of Representatives’ version, then approved by both chambers and signed by the president, George W Bush, to become law.

Kenyan police said Saturday they were investigating 69 Bangladeshi nationals arrested in the country’s port city of Mombasa for possible links to terrorism, drugs and human trafficking. The suspects, who were seized in the overnight operation, were living in two houses in a plush area of Mombasa, heavily guarded by private security.
   ‘We have confirmed that they are all Bangladesh nationals and there is no single Pakistani as earlier thought,’ local deputy police chief John Mbijjiwe told the news agency. ‘We are now pursuing three lines in our investigations: whether they are linked to terrorism activities, drugs or human trafficking.’
   Mbijjiwe refused to disclose where the men were detained, but witnesses said they were in the Port Police Station.
   The Bangladesh foreign minister, M Morshed Khan, however, said the arrested Bangladeshis ‘may be job seekers’ looking for better futures abroad through unauthorised travel agents.
   ‘They may be job seekers. We’ve asked our embassy in Kenya to send us a report,’ he told reporters in Dhaka.
   ‘These things are happening every now and then. We are taking steps to control these incidents,’ the minister said, referring to recent arrests of Bangladeshis in Algeria, Mauritania and Italy.
   Many Bangladeshis travel each year through legal and illegal channels to seek jobs in Western Europe in a bid to flee the poverty of their homeland.
   Their journey can take years with migrants spending months in transit countries in northern and eastern Africa before reaching Western Europe.
   The country has more than 2,000 illegal travel agencies, according to the Bangladesh Travel Agents Society, which describes outlets as fronts for ‘people traffickers’ that prey on the desperation of the poor.
   The Kenyan police said officers found mattresses but no beds and a few bags of rice in the houses where the men were staying in Mombasa’s upmarket estate of Nyali. They also found two computers and pornographic magazines.
   ‘None of them could speak English. We were communicating using sign language,’ Mbijjiwe said.
   A Kenyan caretaker of the house, Ali Masudi, was also arrested, he added.
   The police said trafficking in drugs and people are rampant in the east African nation, notably in the coastal region.
   In November 2002, a vehicle packed with explosives was rammed into the lobby of an Israeli-owned Mombasa hotel, killing 15 people and three presumed suicide bombers.
   In August 1998, two car bombs went off almost simultaneously outside the embassies of the United States in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam in neighbouring Tanzania.
   The attacks killed 224 people and injured around 5,000, almost all of them Africans.
   Both attacks were claimed by Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.

The government is likely to reform the criminal laws to establish a more effective criminal justice delivery system and rule of law.
   The law, justice and parliamentary affairs minister, Moudud Ahmed, and the state minister for home, Lutfozzaman Babar, met Saturday to discuss the issue.
   The closed-door meeting was held for two and half hours in the chamber of the law minister.
   ‘We discussed amendments to the criminal laws,’ Babar told New Age after the meeting. He, however, refused to reveal the issues discussed in the meeting.
   ‘The enactment of reforms has nothing to do with the Rapid Action Battalion or crossfire incidents,’ he said.
   Moudud also told New Age that the meeting had focused on reforms in criminal laws. ‘As the issue involves law enforcing agencies and the home ministry deals with the law enforcers, I am trying to get the opinion of the home ministry.’
   He refused to reveal which particular laws would be amended.
   He, however, said the issues discussed included establishment of permanent attorney service and separate independent investigation institution in the police force for probes into the criminal cases.
   The Code of Criminal Procedure will be amended for effecting reforms in the criminal justice delivery system, he said.
   He also said a seminar would be held on June 1 and 2 to discuss the amendments to the CrPC, and the bill for the amendments would be made final after accommodating the opinions of the participants in the seminar.
   According to a source, the law minister also raised the issue of amending sections 54, 167 and other sections dealing with the police’s power to arrest people without warrants and to take any accused or arrested person into police remand.
   The law minister asked Babar to clarify the position of his ministry on the issue later on, said the source.
   The High Court on April 7, 2003 directed the government to amend certain sections of the CrPC. The court, in its verdict of a writ petition filed after the killing of a university student, Rubel, in police custody, also detailed a guideline for the amendments.
   The law ministry has sent a proposal for amendments in accordance with the High Court’s directives but is yet to get any response from the home ministry, said sources in the law ministry.

The state minister for water resources, Goutam Chakrabarty, on Saturday said India is not much responsive to the requests of Bangladesh to resolve water issues.
   Accusing India of non-cooperation, he said although the government wants to resolve the longstanding water problem through dialogues, the neighbouring country is reluctant.
   ‘We hope that India would sit and talk with us sympathetically,’ he told at a roundtable on the project implementation committee’s role and present situation of the haor areas in Sunamganj organised by ActionAid Bangladesh and Saptahik 2000 at the National Press Club in Dhaka.
   Extending full support for an idea of opposition lawmaker Suranjit Sengupta that the most effective way to resolve water issues in Bangladesh is to solve it politically, Goutam said, ‘But we do not see enough initiatives and responses from the Indian side.’
   The co-riparian country would always try to get its benefits, Suranjit said, adding, ‘But as the citizens of a lower-riparian country, we should be proactive to get our benefits. We should not create political issues out of water. We should rather solve it through diplomatic channels.’
   Some environmentalists held embankments in haor areas responsible for the destruction of nature and ecological balance.
   Some others criticised the project implementation committee for not stopping corruption in embankment building in haor areas.
   The Saptahik 2000 executive editor, Golam Mortoza, said embankments in haor areas, which remain under water most of the time, had been built earlier by contractors. ‘They were blamed for rampant corruption and the embankments proved ineffective to protect boro crops from flood water.’
   Journalist Pir Habibur Rahman said the new arrangement is hampered because of political interference. ‘The committee has been infiltrated by the ruling party activists who are just looting money.’
   But most speakers said the new management system has proved better as boro harvest was not affected by flood in four years.
   The area was brought under the committee this year with seven local government representatives to implement the embankment project. Under the committee, several embankments were overhauled in 28 haors of Sunamganj.
   Water Development Board director general Sharif Rafiqul Islam, water resources joint secretary Habibullah Majumdar, ActionAid country director Nasrin Haq, and environmentalist Shajahan Sorder also spoke.

Three more suspected criminals, two of them claimed to be underground party activists, were killed in ‘crossfire’ and ‘encounter’ in Kushtia and Jhenaidah on Saturday, tallying the total figure of such deaths to 301 from June 2004.
   The Rapid Action Battalion officials in Kushtia said Hasanuzzaman Babu, a suspected Biplabi Communist Party leader, was killed in the ‘crossfire’ between a team of the police and the battalion, and the suspected associates of Hasanuzzaman at Bagdanga in the sadar upazila seven hours after his arrest Friday night.
   In Jhenaidah, Ainal Haque Titas, another suspected activist of the party, was killed in a police ‘encounter’ in the sadar upazila on Saturday.
   In another incident in Jhenaidah, Abdul Gani, a suspected member of a robbers’ gang, was killed in another police ‘encounter’ at Chaklapara in the town early Saturday.
   Hasanuzzaman, also general secretary of the Ailchara union Jatiyatabadi Juba Dal, was arrested in his village Ballavpur in Kushtia at about 8:30pm Friday.
   Based on his statement, a squad of the battalion and the police took Babu to Ailchara, looking for his associates and arms recovery.
   The team was ambushed on the way, leading to a gunfight in which Hasanuzzaman was killed, the battalion said. Two fire arms and seven rounds of ammunition were found at the place.
   The police claimed that Hasanuzzaman, a prime suspect in the ‘eight murder’ case, was wanted in a number of criminal cases.
   The Jhenaidah police claimed that informed of a possible attack on the Naldanga police outpost by Titas and his associates, they raided the village where the suspects were hiding at about 4:00pm Saturday.
   They opened fire on the policemen, who fired back, in which Titas was killed, the police claimed. The police also recovered a pipegun and some ammunition from the place.
   The police said Titas was wanted in more than half a dozen of murder and other criminal cases.
   In the other incident in Jhenaidah, the police said they reached a place on the Jhenaidah–Magura Highway at about 2:45am on Saturday hearing the news of a robbery.
   The police said the robbers fired on them and they fired back, in which Gani was killed.
   He was wanted in more than half a dozen of criminal cases, the police claimed.

The foreign minister, M Morshed Khan, said Bangladesh would continue with the UN peacekeeping missions and remain committed to maintaining global peace despite some tragic incidents that claimed the lives of 14 Bangladeshi soldiers in the past three.
   Terming “unfortunate” the latest killing of a Bangladeshi soldier in Congo on May 13, he told reporters on Saturday that the troops would not be pulled out from Congo. ‘Our troops are there to stay until our peace mission is fulfilled.’
   On SAARC, Morshed said Pakistan might declare the fresh date for holding the 13th SAARC summit in Dhaka any time.
   Dhaka preferred that SAARC to be held on November 12-13 and the schedule had been conveyed to the member countries.
   Quoting telephonic conversations with his Indian counterpart Natwar Singh Friday night, Morshed said the Indian external affairs minister had informed him that they would be happy to join the summit on the preferred date. He asked Natwar to convey Delhi’s position to SAARC chair Pakistan.
   On the attack on Bangladesh embassy in Kuwait, the minister said they had identified the ringleaders and masterminds of the attack on April 24. ‘We have identified the ringleaders who led the attack.’
   He said some 8-9 people were arrested so far following the attack and Kuwait government was investigating the matter apart from Bangladesh’s own probe.

The US military said on Saturday nine of its troops were killed in an offensive against guerrillas and foreign fighters in western Iraq, and guerrillas struck again in Baghdad, leaving at least five people dead.
   Backed by aircraft, US Marines, sailors and soldiers launched Operation Matador one week ago in a bid to root out guerrillas from the western Anbar province.
   The US military estimated about 100 guerrillas were killed in the assault.
   The Anbar offensive is focused on an area near the Euphrates north and west of the town of Qaim, close to the Syrian border, which Iraqi officials say is used by guerrillas to cross over into Iraq and carry out attacks.
   Damascus denies Iraqi accusations that it allows guerrillas to enter Iraq from its border.
   In further unrest Saturday, three Iraqi soldiers were shot dead when their position in Haswah, 80 kilometres south of Baghdad, came under attack.
   North of the capital, gunmen killed an Iraqi civilian working as a translator with the US military in the rebel bastion of Samarra. The body of another Iraqi contractor shot several times in the head was discovered further south, security sources said.
   Up to 24,000 people died in Iraq between the time US forces seized control of the country in May 2003 and December 2004, according to a United Nations Development Programme survey released this week.