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The police in its hunt for militants involved in the August 17 series of blasts raided a suspected den, the house of a leader of Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, a coalition partner of the government, in northwest Rajshahi on Friday and seized arms and explosive.
   The police in the raid also arrested two suspected militants of the banned Islamist outfit Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh from the house at Tanore in the district.
   The law enforcers found a huge amount of bomb-making materials, including detonators, four firearms and books on jihad and bomb-making, in the pre-dawn raid of the house, owned by Nasirullah, a local Jamaat leader.
   The Tanore police officer-in-charge, Jahedur Rahman, told New Age that they had raided the Nasirullah’s house at Chandpur based on the statement of a JMB activist, Mohabbat, who is now in Gomastapur police custody in Chapainawabganj.
   The two arrested — Abdul Hashem Tufan, 28, of Nachole in Chapainawabganj, and Shahidullah, 25, of Tanore — reportedly admitted being involved with Jamaatul Mujahideen and another banned outfit Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh and being involved in the bomb blasts at Ukilbari in Chapainawabganj on August 17.
   All the family members of Shahidullah, including his mother Shahida Begum, are involved with the Jamaat-e-Islami politics and his brother Obaidullah is treasurer of the Tanore unit of the party.
   The two also admitted meeting JMJ linchpin Siddiqul Islam alias Bangla Bhai at Bagmara in 2004 and the active followers of JMJ spiritual leader Shaikh Abdur Rahman.
   The two told newsmen that the raw materials recovered from the house could be used to make about 500 bombs.
   The police recovered more than 100 detonators, pencil batteries, sulphur, mercury, acid, 65 plastic cans for making bombs, electrical devices, electric iron, gunpowder, four country-made pistols and books.
   The books included, Jihad: Tyager Shakti, written by Maulana Masud Ajhar and translated by Omer Faruque and it describes how to make bombs, kinds of bombs, measurements of ingredients, strength, preliminary knowledge of electric devices, power generator, detonators, etc.
   Shahida Begum, who is organiser of Jamaat’s women activists in the upazila, told newsmen that her son had come to the house bag and baggage after the August 17 incident and had been staying there saying that there has been a vacation at his madrassah.
   On September 8, Tufan of Chapainawabganj went to the house and Shahidullah introduced him as his friend, Shahida said.
   She said an Ansars member, Lutfor Rahman of the village, went to their house Thursday evening with three paper cartons.
   The cartons were filled with explosives, but Shahidullah claimed these were his books.
   Shahida said Shahidulah was involved with Chhatra Shibir during his madrassah days and later joined Jamaat and Jagrata Muslim Janata in Chapainawbganj.
   The Tanore police filed two cases — one under Explosive Substances Act and another under Arms Act. The police said they would seek remand for them from the court on Saturday.
   The Rajshahi superintendent of police, Abdullah Al Mahmud, told newsmen that the two militants named the commanders of the 16 northern districts. The militants named Abdul Awal as the JMJ commander of Natore.
   On August 10, a regional meeting with the 16 commanders was held in a thatched house near Natore railway station where it was decided who would be assigned to which posts and which district.
   The police did not name the other 15 district commanders in the interest of investigation.
   During interrogation, the militants reportedly told the superintendent, ‘You [police] deployed us to cleanse Sarbahara (Purba Banglar Communist Party extremists) and kept us secure round-the-clock. Why are you torturing us?’
   The police also seized a compact-disc from the house. It contained the photographs of Twin Towers, destruction of 9/11, and training scenes of Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda.
   In Bagerhat, two JMB leaders, Barkatullah Al Morshed and Abdullah Gazi, were on Friday sent to the joint interrogation cell for further questioning.
   A district magistrates court earlier placed Barkatullah Al Morshed on a seven-day remand and Abdullah Gazi on an eight-day remand for interrogation.
   The police, meanwhile, conducted a massive drive to hunt down 10 listed militants. The police also raided the house of militant Shahidullah arrested earlier in Dhaka, but they found no one there.
   The Bagerhat police superintendent, M Mostafa Kamal, said Morshed had admitted being involved in the August 17 blasts in Bagerhat to the Bagerhat magistrates court under Section 164.
   Based on his statement, the police arrested Maulana Gazi Abdullah, who supplied the bombs.
   In Jhenaidah, JMB militant Tariqul Islam Rinku in his statement in court on Thursday said that he had planted a bomb in the town on August 17. He was sent to jail.

With the three-year tenure of the central committee of the Awami League nearing expiry, demand for a new committee is getting stronger from quarters looking forward to a council session that is ‘still uncertain’.
   Critics of the committee, that is supposed to run it course in December, are pointing towards its failures and advocating holding a fresh council session.
   However, party policymakers are in a fix about holding a council session from a ‘strategic point of view’, in the context of the next general elections. As per the party’s constitution a new council session must be held by the end of this year.
   Most of the policymakers think that the present committee should continue till the next polls as the election of a fresh committee may give birth to new disputes or dissatisfactions. Others think that it would be better to elect a fresh committee to work for the next elections, said party sources.
   They said the party might arrange a brief, special council session only to extend the committee’s tenure for another year and a half.
   In the last council session on December 27, 2002, senior leaders in some vital positions were replaced with new ones with the hope that induction of new faces together with the experience of the old guards would have a ‘very positive impact’ on the party, particularly at the grassroots level.
   But the committee failed to complete the overdue council sessions of the district and upazila units across the country in nearly three years.
   The new leadership till September 15 have only completed council sessions of 45 out of 72 organisational districts, but could not announce full committee for any of them.
   ‘Reviewing the performance of the existing committee in reorganising the party’s organisational activities, we are not convinced that the Awami League will bear any positive result in the next polls,’ a senior leader, who was demoted in the last council session, told New Age last week.
   Also, the grassroots leaders are not happy with the performance of the committee, he said.
   In a series of meetings with the party chief, Sheikh Hasina, early this year, the field level leaders expressed their dismay over the lack of coordination between them and the central leaders.
   A top-ranking leader acknowledged that the present committee failed to meet the party’s demand to some extent, but he said it would not lead to a fresh council session before the next polls.
   ‘Increasing media coverage against us or increased criticism by senior leaders focusing on our failures will not
   necessarily create lead to a fresh council session and election of a new committee,’ an organising secretary of the Awami League said on September 13.
   Asked about the party’s plan about the central council session, the AL general secretary, Abdul Jalil, also a lawmaker, said, ‘Time will say. We will inform [journalists] at the right time.’
   As no hints or preparation for the council session are yet noticeable, most of the leaders think that the present committee will continue till the next general elections as was the case with previous ones.
   The last council session was held after two extensions of the committee’s tenure.
   Failing to hold its triennial council in 2000, the Awami League held a special council session in June 2000 and extended the tenure of the 1997 committee by two more years.
   It could not hold the council in June 2002 and further extended the tenure of the committee by six months.
   In the last council session, Hasina was re-elected, uncontested, president of the Awami League for the sixth term while Abdul Jalil succeeded long-serving general secretary Zillur Rahman.

Notwithstanding the huge demand for landline telephones which the government-controlled monopoly Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board cannot meet, the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission is going slow in opening up the central zone for private sector public-switched telecom network operators.
   Sources in the regulatory commission said the commission is unlikely to invite applications for the central zone or Dhaka Multi-exchange area soon.
   It is now busy finding ways to allow a mobile operation licence to the Dhabi Group, a United Arab Emirates-based group, which signed a memorandum of understanding with the Board of Investment on September 1 to pump $1 billion investment in telecom, hospitality and pharmaceutical sectors.
   ‘Since the government is committed to provide a mobile operation licence to the Dhabi Group, it is the now the prime concern of the commission; and other issues such as inviting application for PSTN licence for the central zone are now under the wraps,’ said an official of the commission.
   Moreover, the commission is under pressure from certain influential political quarters in the Bangladesh Nationalist Party to allow the zone to a certain operator, although the commission earlier invited PSTN applications in other zones under an open licensing system.
   Under the open licensing system, any company with sound financial strength may obtain a licence from the commission fulfilling certain criteria.
   ‘If the commission bends to political pressure to allow only one operator in the zone, it may kick up another legal battle, as the aggrieved prospective operators may file lawsuit,’ said the official.
   ‘So there is a lot of a thing to be cleared up before inviting applications for land phone licence,’ said a commission official.
   However, the commission officials said after winning the legal battle with the UK-based telecom company WorldTel, it was expected that the commission ‘will soon open the zone to private sector PSTN operators to meet the huge unmet telephone demand.’
   The regulatory commission estimate of the demand is 25 lakh landlines.
   Earlier, the full bench of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court upheld a High Court verdict cancelling the four-year exclusive rights of the WorldTel, permitting the government to allow more private sector landline operators in the central zone.
   The High Court on April 23 rejected the WorldTel petition challenging a government move to cancel a clause in the agreement that restrained it from opening up the area to other operators before four years have elapsed.
   WorldTel obtained a licence in July 2001 from the government to provide 3,00,000 landlines in the Dhaka city at an investment of about $300 million on a build-own-operate basis with a four-year exclusive right.
   Earlier, the commission segmented the whole country into five zones —central, northeast, north-west, south-east and south-west.
   The central zone covers the Dhaka city, Zinjira, Savar, Narayanganj, Gazipur and Tongi, which account for, according to the commission, about 60 per cent of the total telecom demands of Bangladesh.
   According to the private operators, the central zone is the most lucrative and commercially viable zone among the five zones, and most of the companies, which obtained licences for other zones, are waiting for the Dhaka city to be opened up to private operators considering the business prospect.
   The commission invited bids for private landline operation on February 17 under the open licence system in four zones, and has so far awarded about 35 licences to 19 companies for operation in the north-east, south-east, north-west and south-west zones.
   The commission, earlier, fixed the licence fee for Dhaka at Tk 5 crore and renewal fees at Tk 2 crore.

The United States has reiterated its stand to work together with Bangladesh in all areas of cooperation, terming the relations between the two countries very firm.
   The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said this when she made a courtesy call on the prime minister, Khaleda Zia, who is now in New York at her Grand Hyatt hotel suite, on Thursday.
   The secretary of state said Bangladesh was an important country to the United States, describing it as a moderate Muslim majority nation.
   Welcoming the Bangladesh leader to New York, Rice said Bangladesh and the United States shared commitment to democracy and democracy was functioning in Bangladesh.
   The prime minister said Bangladesh was a moderate country where communal harmony had been prevailing and her government was firm to maintain it.
   Khaleda said there were some people who tried to create an event in the name of Islam to scare people but people of Bangladesh had been maintaining a peaceful life.
   She said the major Islamic political parties and organisations in Bangladesh had condemned the incident.
   The prime minister said the government had brought the situation under control and arrested a number of persons for their alleged terror link.
   Khaleda told the US secretary of state that perpetrators of such terrorism would be brought under legal action.
   Condoleezza Rice expressed happiness over the government’s steps and measures in this regard. She also expressed happiness over Bangladesh and its people’s stand against international terrorism.
   The US secretary of state hoped that the next general election in Bangladesh would be held in due time.
   Responding to her, Khaleda said the next election would be held as per schedule.
   Bangladesh has track records of holding free, fair and neutral elections which is universally recognised, she added.
   The prime minister renewed the invitation to the US president, George W Bush, through the secretary of state to visit Bangladesh. She also invited Condoleezza Rice to visit Bangladesh.
   The Bangladesh ambassador in Washington, Shamsher Mobin Chowdhury, was present during the meeting.
   The US secretary of state was accompanied by the US under secretary, Nicolas Burns and the assistant secretary for South Asia, Cristina Rocca.
   The Bangladesh foreign minister, M Morshed Khan, the foreign affairs adviser, Reaz Rahman, were present.
   Meanwhile, United Nations Development Programme, a development partner of Bangladesh, has pledged to continue supports for Bangladesh’s economic development activities.
   The UNDP administrator, Kemal Dervis, who took his assignment one month back, made the assurance while he made a courtesy call on the prime minister at her Grand Hyatt hotel suite Thursday afternoon.
   Kemal Dervis, a former finance minister of Turkey who led his country’s economic reforms programme, appreciated Bangladesh’s development policies and various achievements in social and economic sectors.
   Congratulating Dervis on his new assignment, the prime minister said Bangladesh is a democratic country pursuing a liberal economic policy.
   She said despite introduction of the quota-free system, Bangladesh’s readymade garment sector had successfully overcome the problems through its own initiative.
   Khaleda said Bangladesh would give all-out support to UNDP when it becomes the executive board member of he UN development agency.
   Bangladesh will become executive board member of UNDP in next January, according to an official source.
   Khaleda also invited the UNDP administrator to visit Bangladesh.
   Earlier, the executive director of UNICEF, Ann Venemen, called on Khaleda at her hotel suite.
   Ann, who was agriculture secretary of the Bush Administration in the last term, appreciated Bangladesh’s successes in various sectors including reduction of child mortality rate and progress in primary and women education.
   The finance minister, M Saifur Rahman, and the Bangladesh Permanent Representative to UN, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, were present at both the meetings.

Indian water resources minister, Priyaranjan Dasmunshi, on Friday said his country would not do anything in its river interlinking that could harm neighbouring Bangladesh.
   Dasmunshi, who is due to leave for Bangladesh on Sunday for a ministerial-level meeting of the Bangladesh-India Joint Rivers Commission, said this in an exclusive interview with the news agency.
   The present government was only concentrating on interlinking the southern rivers of India and not the Himalayan rivers and therefore, for Bangladesh ‘it would be an uncalled-for concern regarding the interlinking river project, he said.
   ‘Our government has not even discussed the Himalayan component of river interlinking. There is, therefore, no basis for Bangladesh to be concerned about it,’ said Dasmunshi at his office at Shramshakti Bhavan.
   ‘India will not do anything that could harm our neighbours Bangladesh, Bhutan, Pakistan or Nepal,’ he said.
   The two-day JRC meeting, scheduled to begin in Dhaka on Monday, is expected to discuss all the outstanding issues relating to the common rivers.
   The Bangladesh side will be led by the water resources minister, Hafiz Uddin Ahmed.
   Dasmunshi said he was quite optimistic about resolving all issues relating to common rivers, including sharing of the waters of Teesta and six other rivers, problems of the border rivers and sharing flood forecasting data.
   But, he said, there was no reason for Bangladesh to be worried about Tipaimukh Dam, as it was a power project and not an irrigation scheme.
   ‘I am going to Dhaka with an open mind, not only to resolve river water issues but also to improve and bolster Indo-Bangladesh bilateral relations,’ said Dasmunshi.
   He said, ‘There is no problem between the two countries that they cannot amicably resolve through negotiations.
   He said farmers of both the countries need water and Indian government is quite conscious about it.
   Dasmunshi said, ‘Bangladesh is steadily achieving progress. Its economy is fast moving ahead. India wants to be on its side and help it. India in any way does not want to be an obstacle to Bangladesh’s way to development.’

A leading businessman was sued on Friday after he had been charged of misbehaving with an Indian diplomat’s wife.
   The police on Friday also arrested a bodyguard of the businessman, Shah Alam, chairman of Bashundhara Group, and sent him to jail on charge of harassing Rupa Chakravarti, wife of the deputy high commissioner of India in Dhaka, S Chakravarti, on Thursday
   The bodyguard, Hedayetul Islam, was produced before the chief metropolitan magistrate court from where he was sent to jail on Friday, the police said.
   The police arrested the man immediately after a case was filed by Vinod Kumar, the driver of Rupa Chakravarti.
   In the case, Vinod Kumar alleged that Basundhara Group chairman Shah Alam and his associates misbehaved with Rupa in front of the Apollo Hospital while they were returning home on Thursday afternoon.
   The attackers pulled them out of the car and confined them for about an hour. They also used abusive languages with them, Vinod Kumar alleged.
   An official of the Indian High Commission told New Age the attackers also assaulted the driver of Rupa’s car.
   Later, policemen and members of the Indian High Commission went to the spot and rescued them, the police said.
   The incident was brought to the notice of the foreign ministry and the ministry assured of proper action.
   An official of the foreign ministry told New Age that they had immediately asked the police to take quick action against the offenders. ‘The foreign ministry will also take whatever measures are needed,’ he said.
   Regarding the non-arrest of Shah Alam, the investigation officer of the case, sub-inspector Mahfuzul Karim, said they did not find him at his residence till Friday evening.

Lenders based in Dhaka will hold a meeting between November 15 and November 17 in the capital to prioritise issues related to the implementation of targets of the poverty reduction strategy paper, indicating their future lending strategy, sources in the Economic Relations Division told New Age on Thursday.
   Aid flow for the next three years under the proposed joint country assistance strategy programmes of major lenders including the World Bank, Asian Development Bank, Department for International Development and Japan is likely to be finalised soon after the meeting, the sources said.
   The three-day meeting of the Poverty Reduction Strategy Implementation Forum will be presided at by M Saifur Rahman, the minister for finance and planning.
   Country heads of Dhaka-based lending agencies, bilateral aid groups and donor agencies, delegation heads of the European Union and the United States, also members of the consultative group, will attend the meeting.
   Ministers and secretaries are also expected to attend, said sources in the finance ministry.
   The meeting will also focus on issues including corruption, governance, enhancing business competitiveness to promote trade and investment and address law and order situation, said sources in the diplomatic circle.
   The members of the consultative group will outline their lending policy and direct policymakers towards implementing the targets set out in the poverty reduction strategy, the sources said.
   The meeting of the forum will be held every year, beginning 2005, a high official of the Economic Relations Division told New Age.
   ‘The meeting, which will replace the meeting of the Bangladesh Development Forum, will be held every year to assess the progress of the poverty reduction strategy,’ the official said.
   The poverty reduction strategy paper, a lender-dictated document, is likely to be placed soon at the meeting of the National Economic Council for approval, said sources.
   The steering committee of the document, headed by principal secretary to the Prime Minister’s Office, Kamal Uddin Siddiqui, approved the document on August 16.

The Venezuelan president, Hugo Chavez, took the US president, George W Bush, to task in front of a global summit for waging war in Iraq without UN consent and won rousing applause for his critique.
   The leftist leader told a UN summit on Thursday that fighting the war without UN authorisation showed Washington did not respect the world body. He recommended moving UN headquarters to a country that has more regard for the organisation.
   ‘There were never weapons of mass destruction but Iraq was bombed, and over UN objections, (it was) occupied and continues being occupied,’ Chavez said. Bush alleged that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction but none have been found, shattering one of his main arguments for going to war.
   ‘That’s why we propose to this assembly that the United Nations leave this country, which is not respectful of the very resolutions of this assembly,’ Chavez said.
   Chavez, a close ally of the Cuban leader Fidel Castro, suggested moving UN headquarters from New York to an international city ‘outside the sovereignty of any state’ and said some have mentioned Jerusalem as one possibility.
   But the Venezuelan leader said the new headquarters has to be in the South, home to most developing countries.
   Bush was not in the audience when Chavez spoke to the world representatives. But the US president did address the summit’s the opening session on Wednesday morning, then returned to Washington later that day.
   World leaders at the summit had been asked to speak for five minutes but Chavez ran long and when the presiding diplomat passed him a note saying his time was up, he threw it on the floor. He said if Bush could speak for 20 minutes, so could he.
   When he finally stopped, he got what observers said was the loudest applause of the summit.
   Relations between Chavez and Washington have become increasingly strained, though the United States remains the top buyer of Venezuelan oil.
   Chavez repeatedly has accused the US government of backing plots against him, and recently alleged Washington was preparing to invade his country.
   American religious broadcaster Pat Robertson recently suggested the United States assassinate Chavez because he poses a threat. Chavez responded that Robertson had clearly ‘expressed the wish of the elite that govern the United States.’ Robertson has since apologized.
   US officials strongly deny the Venezuelan leader’s claims but have expressed concerns about the health of the country’s democracy under Chavez, who was first elected in 1998 pledging a social ‘revolution’ for the poor majority.
   The two leaders have clashed over a host of other issues as well. Bush criticized Venezuela’s government earlier Thursday, saying the South American nation had ‘failed demonstrably’ to make a concerted effort to block shipments of illicit narcotics to the United States and Europe last year.
   Venezuela could have been subjected to a cutoff of US assistance, but Bush decided to waive the provision because of national security interests.
   In early August, Chavez accused the US Drug Enforcement Administration of using its agents in Venezuela for espionage, and said Venezuela was suspending cooperation with the agency. The Bush administration denied the espionage charge.
   Chavez, whose country is the world’s fifth-largest oil exporter, also warned the world is facing an unprecedented energy crisis.
   He told reporters later the crisis will keep growing, ‘not because we the producers want it but because we are running out of oil.’
   Chavez singled out the United States as the most wasteful country, saying he was shocked when a quarter of all the cars he counted Thursday morning on New York streets had one person in them.
   ‘That’s crazy, one person with a huge car ... that is using up gas and polluting the atmosphere,’ he said at a news conference. ‘The world cannot tolerate this model of development called the American way of life.’
   In a form of energy diplomacy, Chavez has extended a preferential oil trade deal called PetroCaribe to 13 Caribbean countries in what he says is part of a plan to challenge US economic domination of the region.
   Under the plan, Venezuela will soon sell up to 190,000 barrels of fuel a day to countries from Jamaica to St. Lucia, offering favourable financing while shipping fuel directly to reduce costs. It is expected to help those countries save millions of dollars.

Leaders from around the world hold a final day of meetings at the UN summit Friday, with Iran’s nuclear ambitions and condemnations of terrorism as top issues.
   US diplomats have been lobbying hard to take Iran before the United Nations Security Council for possible sanctions for its nuclear programme, which Washington and other western nations believe is aimed at producing nuclear weapons.
   However, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency, the UN nuclear watchdog agency, is expected to delay referring Iran to the Security Council when its 35-nation board of governors convenes on Monday.
   Plans to immediately refer Tehran to the Security Council for sanctions are opposed by Russia and China, as well as non-aligned states supporting Iran’s claim to peaceful nuclear technology under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), diplomats said.
   Three European foreign ministers on Thursday talked with Iranian officials here in a bid to head off a showdown.
   Britain’s Jack Straw, France’s Philippe Douste-Blazy and Germany’s Joschka Fischer met with their Iranian counterpart and later conferred briefly with the Islamic Republic’s new president in a diplomatic push brokered by the UN secretary general, Kofi Annan.
   ‘We had a very thorough exchange of the different positions of the EU-3 and the new government of Iran,’ Straw said after the 80-minute session with the Iranian foreign minister, Manouchehr Mottaki.
   Douste-Blazy said the ministers had a ‘very frank discussion’ in the first talks between Iran and the so-called EU-3 since a May 25 session in Geneva.
   The ministers later sat down with Iran’s new president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who planned to unveil what Tehran called new proposals to resolve the standoff in a speech here Saturday.
   ‘We’re going to listen carefully to what the president has
   to say and we’ll take it from there,’ Straw said after the meeting.
   European Union foreign policy chief Javier Solana, who also attended the meeting with Ahmadinejad along with Fischer, stressed there were no actual negotiations.
   ‘We have only prepared the ground,’ Solana said, wondering if it was possible to continue. ‘We have to wait until the (Saturday) speech,’ he said.
   Douste-Blazy insisted the EU-3 strategy had always been to avoid Security Council involvement, but added that the next step would depend on how far Ahmadinejad goes in addressing the Europeans’ concerns.
   Annan organised the meeting between Iran and the EU-3, which has been trying for nearly two years to wean Tehran off its suspected nuclear arms ambitions with economic and security incentives.
   On the margins of the summit, the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, also huddled with Ahmadinejad, but a Russian official present for the first half of the hour-long meeting said the two leaders did not discuss Tehran’s nuclear programme.
   Russia is building a nuclear power plant in Bushehr, Iran.
   Moscow has indicated it will not support hauling Iran before the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme.
   Ahmadinejad on Wednesday lashed out at Western ‘interventionism’ when he addressed the General Assembly, and but did not mention the nuclear issue.
   Ahmadinejad, however, has defended his country’s nuclear programme as purely peaceful.

The Tata Group’s proposed investment in four projects in Bangladesh will reach the $3 billion mark from the $2.5 billion announced earlier if negotiations to be held later this month are fruitful.
   Also, if a deal is struck, the Bangladesh government may have to supply gas to all three plants — fertiliser, steel and power — since development of the coal field will not be possible before 2013, said top officials of the Indian conglomerate.
   Contentious issues likely to come up during the ensuing talks involve gas pricing, land lease, method of coal mining, and a guarantee of uninterrupted gas supply for 30 years, although Tata officials are hopeful to resolve them through a ‘win-win’ agreement.
   ‘We believe, issues could be resolved, no matter how tough they are,’ Tridibesh Mukherjee, deputy managing director of Tata told a group of Bangladeshi journalists at the industrial belt, Tata Nagar, in Jamshedpur.
   The journalists’ tour included Tata plants, especially on motors, steel and power generation, and coal mine in West Bokaro in another part of Jharkhand.
   Asked about probable opposition to the investment in Bangladesh from powerful Indian lobbies, Mukherjee said, ‘We have spoken to many people about this issue. Some said there are problems in Bangladesh. We tried to convince all so that there are no barriers to this initiative at a later stage.’
   Mukherjee also brushed aside the possibility of environmental damages in case an open-cast mining is followed instead of the traditional shaft method.
   ‘Tata will never do anything which is detrimental to the people and environment,’ he said adding that the company would conduct adequate studies before commissioning the projects.
   A joint announcement with the government will be issued after reaching an agreement on various issues including infrastructure covering Indo-Bangladesh cross-border transportation of goods for Tata, said officials.
   Tata enters the third round of negotiations after September 20.
   About the 30-year guarantee of gas supply, he and his colleagues commonly said they would have to raise funds from multilateral lending agencies and other international financial institutions for implementing the projects.
   A top official of the government told New Age that the government would be able to convince Tata with a 20-year guarantee of gas supply.
   However, the group is yet to plan floating shares in Bangladesh’s capital market, said company officials.
   Eying south and southeast Asia’s growing market in the next two decades Tata Steel has planned to set up its plants in Bangladesh with a capacity of producing 2.4 million tonnes of hot roll coil annually that is used as raw materials for different industries.
   The projected demand of steel in Bangladesh is 1.3 million tonnes per annum by 2010. ‘After meeting local demand, we will export the rest,’ said Indranil Senghupta, chief of Bangladesh project (steel), who earlier looked after steel plant in Jamshedpur.
   The Tata group demanded 2,000 acres for its steel plant either in Kushtia or Pabna and another 300 acres in an adjacent area for developing township as part of the company’s corporate social responsibility.
   Senghupta said all issues — land, mine and gas price — should come under a same package deal with the government of Bangladesh. ‘Nothing is separate.’
   Meantime, Tata is almost certain to set up its urea fertiliser plant in Banshkhali, Chitagong, since there are no controversies except gas pricing, which is common for steel and power projects. These two and the coal mining project are inter-linked and thus more contentious.
   The group’s power plant beside the Barapukuria coal mine is expected to generate 1,000MW electricity, half of which will be consumed by the steel plant alone.
   Running 91 companies with some $17 billion turnover a year, Tata was founded by Jamshedji N Tata, the great grandfather of the current chairman, Ratan N Tata, starting a steel venture in a jungle, about a century ago.
   The group now employs 2.2 lakh people.

The directors, developers, and shops owners of the Motaleb Plaza Shopping Complex on Friday demanded the arrest of Abdul Hamid Dablu and Akhter Hamid Paban, sons of the chief whip, Khandaker Delwar Hossain.
   Good Luck Real Estate general manage Mohammad Ali Manu told New Age that they now feared attack on them and their family members as the police are yet to nab the accused in four cases filed under the speedy trial act on Sunday.
   He said they also submitted two applications to the Dhaka Metropolitan Police commissioner on Thursday seeking security, but the police are yet to provide any security at the marketplace or their residences.
   ‘The complainants of the four cases are passing through a tough time fearing attack,’ Manu said. ‘If the situation continues, the shop owners will stop going to the market very soon.’
   A shop owner, Abdus Samad, said although the authorities had filed the cases against the two and their associates, the police are yet to take any steps. ‘How we will continue our business?’
   Investigation officer Abdullah Hel Baki told New Age that they had been trying to arrest the two brothers.
   Another investigation officer, Aminul Islam, said they had conducted a drive at Bakshibazar hideout Friday morning, but failed to arrest the accused.
   Paban declined to make any comments.
   The Motaleb Plaza project director, Mokhter Hossain, and three land owners — Abdur Rahim, Abdus Samad, and Abdus Selim — filed four cases with the Ramna police against Paban, Dablu, and six others.
   They also filed a general diary on Wednesday against the two brothers and their associates.

The police are yet to nab Rafiqul Islam, the closed officer-in-charge of the Motijheel police station, also the prime accused in the murder case of Kamrul Islam Momin, a city unit vice-president of the Bangladesh Chhatra League backed by the Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal. Momin was murdered on Tuesday morning.
   Shamsul Islam, the elder brother of the victim alleged that the police are yet to launch any drive to arrest Rafiqul, named first in the first information report. He claimed that the locals had apprehended those accused in the case handed them over to the police.
   ‘The accused Shah Alam, Minto and Almas are threatening to kill the whole family. They even threatened us over phone when members of the Rapid Action Battalion were here on Thursday night,’ said Shamsul.
   He said, ‘We cannot believe that there will be a proper investigation if the police are charged with it as the prime accused is a police officer.’ Shamsul urged that there should be a judicial inquiry into the murder.
   Momin’s qulkhani was held at his 155, North Ibrahimpur residence after asr on Friday. A six-member police team was deployed in front of the house for security.
   The Kafrul police produced Osman, arrested on Thursday afternoon from Ibrahimpur area, before the Chief Metropolitan Magistrates Court seeking a seven-day remand but the court granted a three-day remand.
   Nasimul Islam, officer-in-charge of the Kafrul police station, also the investigation officer of the case, told New Age, ‘We have gathered some significant information from the arrested during initial interrogation but we cannot disclose it for the interest of the case.’
   Regarding arresting the prime accused, Rafiqul, Nasimul said, ‘A departmental investigation led by deputy commissioner west is going on and we have to decide about the arrest after submission of the investigation report.’
   A family member of Rafiqul Islam, told New Age, ‘He is seriously ill and was admitted in a private clinic on Wednesday. But he has decided to surrender before the court on Sunday.’

The US president, George W Bush, again took the blame for the government’s flawed response to Hurricane Katrina but promised one of the biggest rebuilding efforts the world has ever seen in the disaster zone.
   As the US leader promised a drastic safety review for every US city, the New Orleans’ mayor said residents could start returning to the stricken city this weekend.
   ‘The system, at every level of government, was not well coordinated, and was overwhelmed in the first few days,’ Bush said in a prime-time speech to the nation from Jackson Square in New Orleans’ historic French Quarter.
   Setting out a recovery plan from the destructive August 29 storm for which the death toll reached 792 on Thursday, Bush said: ‘Four years after the frightening experience of September 11, Americans have every right to expect a more effective response in a time of emergency.
   ‘When the federal government fails to meet such an obligation, I as president am responsible for the problem, and for the solution.’
   Bush ordered a sweeping review of disaster-response plans in every major US city. ‘I consider detailed emergency planning to be a national security priority,’ Bush said.
   The president gave no detail how much on top of the 62 billion dollars allotted by Congress, but vowed: ‘The work that has begun in the Gulf Coast region will be one of the largest reconstruction efforts the world has ever seen.’
   Amid criticism of the treatment of New Orleans’ poor blacks who made up the majority of the tens of thousands stranded in the city, Bush made a point of emphasizing that special help had to be given to African-Americans in the rebuilding.
   Bush was back in the region for the fourth time since the storm, as his popularity plumbed new lows, to make his proposals to rebuild the disaster zone across Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
   Katrina has further damaged the US president’s standing, already hit by the Iraq war.
   A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll released Thursday showed that just 40 per cent of those interviewed approved of his overall performance as president, the lowest level since he took office in January 2001. Nearly 60 per cent said they were unhappy with the Bush administration’s response to Hurricane Katrina.
   Louisiana officials added 84 to the state’s toll taking it to 558 dead. In addition there have been 218 deaths in Mississippi, two in Alabama and 14 in Florida.
   While New Orleans made faltering steps toward recovery, Hurricane Ophelia, the seventh of the hurricane season, inflicted floods and power cuts on about 100,000 people in North Carolina on the Atlantic coast.
   But it eased as the day wore on and was downgraded to a tropical storm and was expected to head back out to sea.

The prime minister, Khaleda Zia, on Thursday talked over telephone from New York to Enayetullah Khan, editor of New Age and Holiday, and enquired after his health.
   Khaleda wished him earliest recovery from his battle against cancer and return to Bangladesh.
   Khaleda is in New York on the occasion of the 60th session of the UN General Assembly.
   Enayetullah, who underwent surgery of a malignant tumour at the head of the pancreas on April 28, is now undergoing chemotherapy at Princess Margaret Hospital under the University of Tornoto health network.

The publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Peter Kann, made a courtesy call on the prime minister, Khaleda Zia, in New York on Thursday.
   Kann, also the chairman of the board of Dow Jones and chief executive officer of The Wall Street Journal, was in Bangladesh during the country’s War of Independence in 1971 and filed stories as a reporter.
   During his meeting with Khaleda, Kann took a walk down memory lane, recalling his experiences of covering Bangladesh’s War of Independence.

Two suspected highway robbers were killed in an encounter between the police and their associates at Nischintapur of Chandina in Comilla early Friday, raising the ‘crossfire’ death toll to 396 from June 2004.
   They were Shukkur, 28, of Chandina, and Mahbub, 32, of Daudkandi.
   The police arrested Shukkur and Mahbub at Chandina on the Dhaka-Comilla Highway Wednesday night and took them to Nischintapur Thursday night to recover their hidden arms.
   As they reached the village, the associates of Shukkur and Mahbub opened fire on the law enforcers, prompting them to fire back, the police claimed.
   Mahbub and Shukkur sustained injuries in the half-hour encounter and died on the spot. A policeman was also injured.
   The police recovered a revolver, 10 bullets and seven cartridges from the spot.

Dhaka University students on Friday caught an eight-foot python from shrubs near the gate of Zia Hall.
   Resident students of the hall saw the large tropical snake at about 5:30pm, called other fellowmen and pulled it out from the shrubs. They also beat up the python and then put it into a sack.
   Later, hall provost Prof Borhanuddin came to the scene and sent it to the zoology department.

Results of the Higher Secondary Certificate examinations held under the seven general education boards are likely to be published on September 25, education ministry sources said.
   Results of the HSC equivalent Alim examinations under the Madrassah Education Board and of the Business Management examinations under the Technical Education Board will also be published on the same day.
   The education ministry on Thursday sent a letter to the prime minister, Khaleda Zia, seeking a date for formally handing over the result sheets to her between September 25 and September 27, a high official of the ministry said.
   The examinations started on May 12 and ended on June 23.

An investigation has found a number of hardline groups, including Islamist organisations, operating at British universities, according to a newspaper report on Friday.
   The study, due to be published next week and seen by The Guardian newspaper, follows a call on Thursday by Britain’s education minister for universities to clamp down on student extremists in the wake of the London bombings in July.
   Ruth Kelly said university administrators must inform police if they suspect students or staff are engaging in ‘unacceptable behaviour’.
   According to The Guardian, the report by Brunel University’s centre for intelligence and security studies found ‘extremist and/or terror groups’ active in more than 30 institutions.
   These included Oxford and Cambridge universities and the London School of Economics.
   Among the active groups discovered were radical Islamist group Hizb ut-Tahrir, previously banned from university campuses for alleged anti-Semitism. After the July attacks, the government announced it was outlawing the group.
   Another newly-banned group, al-Muhajiroun, which had supposedly been disbanded, was also detected, along with other organisations named as espousing extreme Islamist views, the paper said.
   Additionally, the far-right British National Party was found to be active on campuses.
   ‘This is a serious threat,’ said Anthony Glees, director of the centre for intelligence and security studies and author of the report.
   ‘We have discovered a number of universities where subversive activities are taking place, often without the knowledge of the university authorities.’

Nepalese police Friday arrested 80 journalists who staged a demonstration demanding the restoration of press freedom in the country which has been shaken by a wave of pro-democracy protests.
   The journalists were arrested because they staged the demonstration in a central area of the capital Kathmandu where protests have been banned since King Gyanendra seized power in February, police said.
   Although a number of journalists have been arrested in the wake of the king’s takeover, this marked the largest single roundup.