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The World Bank has said most of the general managers and directors of nationalised commercial banks are inefficient and ineffective and asked the government to recruit people from the private sector to these posts without further delay, in line with a commitment it has made to the multilateral lending agency.
   The bank has also asked the finance ministry provide the nationalised banks with operational autonomy, including the authority to hire and fire, according to sources.
   ‘While it is necessary to recruit mid- and high-level staff with requisite and new skills in a restructuring exercise, the continuing freeze on general recruitment by NCBs makes it difficult to do so,’ wrote the bank’s country director, Christine I Wallich, in a communiqué to the Bangladesh Bank and the Finance Division on March 23.
   ‘Moreover, most of the GMs may not have the necessary experience or skills to carry out their tasks efficiently and effectively.’
   The Finance Division promised the lending agency in a February 13 letter that the conditions would be met latest by March, said the sources.
   The communiqué refers to the government’s commitment. ‘GOB [the government of Bangladesh] has now agreed to allow selective recruitment of mid-level staff as well as the GMs in charge of IT, internal control and accounting in Agrani, Janata and Sonali Bank.’
   The bank also wants at least two directors with skill and experience in banking, accounting and business on the boards of the three banks.
   ‘A common remark made by the NCBs is that most of the Board members do not have the requisite experience and skills to add value to the management. Experienced and professional directors with skilled management at NCBs are sine qua non for running a bank efficiently and for the challenging task of restructuring,’ reads the communiqué.
   ‘Therefore, in addition to new GMs, GOB also agreed to restructure the Boards of the NCBs to include at least two Directors with skill and experience in banking, accounting and business.’
   It is learnt that, in its letter to the World Bank, the Finance Division pledged to meet an eight-point criteria on the NCBs.
   According to the letter, the division will give required instruction to Sonali, Janata and Rupali relating to operational autonomy of their managements.
   Besides, it will provide written approval to the NCBs for recruitment of mid-level and professional staff on contractual basis, termination of services of non-performing staff and introduction of a merit-based promotion regime with high remunerations.
   It will start the process of recruiting qualified local professionals to replace incumbent GMs of all the three banks, in the area of IT, internal audit and accounting and DGM in the area of credit.
   Furthermore, the letter said, the government will amend existing contracts to provide the management and consultant teams specific and monitorable performance indicators against which their performance can be measured and evaluated. The managing directors will be made responsible for achieving the indicators.
   The Finance Division will take legal steps to complete the corporatisation of Agrani, Janata and Sonali, said the letter.
   The letter also mentioned that the government would expedite the implementation of recommendations of the consultants on their operational and financial restructuring and introduce a government-funded voluntary retirement scheme in consultation with the NCBs and the central bank to assist staff reductions prior to the sale of the NCBs.
   Govt officials were tight-lipped about the government’s commitment and the progress in its implementation.
   ‘We will soon finalise the criteria for recruiting GMs and DGMs from the private sector; however, they may be appointed without replacing anybody,’ hinted one official in the finance ministry.
   It is feared that the recruitment of general managers and deputy general managers from the private sector to the nationalised banks may stir resentment among the existing staff as they feel it will stall promotion of lower-level bank officials.
   Experts believe the health of the NCBs in terms of lending, loan recovering and providing service to clients will be much better once operational autonomy is delegated to the three banks.
   Sources in the central bank told New Age that professionals from the private sector could be recruited as consultants or advisers, as such posts will be equivalent to the post of a general manager, to avert any possible unrest.
   As of Wednesday, the finance ministry has made no concrete decision, the sources said.

The ruling BNP on Friday proposed a 10-member committee for a dialogue on the opposition proposal for electoral reforms.
   ‘A committee of five members each from the ruling and opposition parties should be admirable,’ wrote the BNP secretary general, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan, in a letter to Abdul Jalil, general secretary of the Awami League and coordinator of the AL-led opposition alliance. ‘A small committee comprising policy-level members will be helpful for a successful dialogue.’
   Mannan Bhuiyan, also the local government, rural development and cooperatives minister, made it clear that the BNP-led ruling alliance would have no objection should the opposition nominate a person, who is not a member of the parliament, for the proposed committee.
   BNP leaders Mofiqul Hassan Tripti and Ahmed Musa on carried the letter to Jalil in the afternoon.
   The letter is the latest in the correspondence between the ruling and the opposition camps over the proposed committee for a dialogue on the reform proposal.
   On March 22, Jalil sought some clarifications on the composition of the committee and suggesting that the discussion should begin and a decision be made ‘at the earliest possible time’.
   The letter was in response to a formal invitation from Mannan Bhuiyan for the opposition to send names to be included in the proposed committee.
   The BNP secretary general held a news briefing at his Bailey Road official residence in the capital city after sending the letter to Jalil.
   He said the committee should work out its terms of reference and set a cut-off date for the dialogue.
   Mannan Bhuiyan hoped the opposition would soon send the names of its representatives so that the committee could go ahead with the dialogue.
   He also hoped that the opposition would join the dialogue with an open mind.
   Mannan Bhuiyan, also convener of the ministerial committee on law and order, said the government was not afraid of any agitation, referring to the Awami League’s programmes, including a sit-in in front of the Prime Minister’s Office on April 19.
   He told New Age later that the government side in the talks would comprise a representative from Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh, a key component in the four-party ruling alliance. ‘It will be quite usual to have a member from the party [on the committee].’
   He refused to make much of the AL allegations that the prime minister, Khaleda Zia, had dismissed different aspects of the opposition proposal in her address to several public meetings. ‘It is usual that both sides will try to drum up popular support until they reach a consensus on the issue.’
   Mannan Bhuiyan, however, urged the opposition to keep the political climate peaceful, saying it should avoid programmes that might lead to a deterioration of law and order.
   The leader of the opposition, Sheikh Hasina, raised the reform proposal in the parliament on February 12, suggesting that the chief of the interim caretaker government should be a person acceptable to all.
   She also suggested that the defence ministry should remain under the caretaker government instead of the president. She also proposed a set of proposals for electoral reforms.
   Khaleda, in her winding-up address to the winter session of Jatiya Sangsad on February 28, proposed the formation of a committee for a dialogue on the reform proposals.

The Awami League general secretary and coordinator of the AL-led opposition alliance, Abdul Jalil, on Friday said the exchange of letters between the ruling and the opposition camps would continue and even a dialogue might be held but the reforms would come through movement.
   ‘Letters will come and go, and even a dialogue may take place, but the success on the reforms issues will come through street movement,’ he said immediately after receiving the letter from the BNP secretary general, Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan.
   The government has hurriedly responded to the opposition letter, realising the strength of the AL-led alliance after its sit-in on Thursday, he said. ‘The government delayed a response to see our strength and has now realised how strong we are as people joined the sit-in spontaneously and said “no” to it,’ Jalil said.
   ‘It would have been better if the letter had come before the sit-in.’
   He said, however, that a response to or a decision on the letter would come upon consultation with the leader of the opposition in parliament and AL president, Sheikh Hasina, and other leaders of the alliance. Jalil himself carried the letter the Sudha Sadan residence of Hasina and sat with her for an emergency meeting, sources said.

FIFA president Sepp Blatter and Asian Football Confederation president Mohamed Bin Hammam will grace the inaugural ceremony of the AFC Challenge Cup, the biggest international football tournament the country has ever hosted at the Bangabandhu National Stadium today. The 16-team tourney, which provides an international platform for the emerging and developing countries, will be played in Dhaka and Chittagong.
   Blatter marks his first arrival in Bangladesh after a number of negative responses from him to inaugurate the BFF Building built under the ‘FIFA goal project’. Blatter will be the second FIFA boss to set foot here after Joao Havelange, who visited the country in 1980.
   Bangladesh was selected as the sole host of the inaugural edition of the AFC Challenge Cup due to unrest in Nepal. Initially, it was planned that Nepal would host eight teams and Bangladesh host the others with the finals in Dhaka.
   On the opening day four matches will be played. Hosts Bangladesh will take on Cambodia at the BNS at 6:00pm while in the earlier kick-off Palestine meet Guam at 3:30pm. Away at Chittagong’s MA Aziz Stadium, India
   face Afghanistan at 3:30pm and in another game it will be Chinese Taipei against Philippines at the same venue at 6:00pm.
   Blatter will arrive in Bangladesh at 8:30am from Doha with the AFC president Hammam. He will meet President Iajuddin Ahmed at Bangabhaban at 11:00am and meet the press at 12: 15pm. He will inaugurate the tournament at 5:30pm.
   A colourful function is on the cards in the inauguration ceremony. Following a march-past by members of the armed forces to the tune of bands, 16 mounted horsemen will bring the national flags of the participating countries.
   With the colours of FIFA, AFC, BFF and the tournament flag flying high, the guests will be welcomed by another
   cultural show concentrating on different national emblems before presenting the tournament logo. Spandan will be
   perform brief cultural programme before Bangladesh take on Cambodia in the second match.
   Afghanistan, India, Philippines and Chinese Taipei are in Group A. Bhutan, Brunei Darussalam, Nepal and Sri Lanka make up Group B. Bangladesh, Cambodia, Guam and Palestine play in Group C while Kyrgyzstan, Macau, Pakistan and Tajikistan are placed in Group D. Group C and D matches will be played in Bangabandhu National Stadium while A and B matches will be hosted in MA Aziz Stadium Chittagong.
   Both Bangladesh Television and BTV World will telecast all the matches from April1-16.

The demand for an elected central committee of the Bangladesh Chhatra League is gathering momentum as the council of the student organisation, one of the largest in the country, nears, but the Awami League policymakers seem to be in a dilemma over whether to elect or select the new leadership of its student wing.
   The much-awaited biennial council session of the Chhatra League is scheduled for April 4 although the tenure of the incumbent committee expired two years ago.
   A section of the Awami League and the Chhatra League leaders are in favour of selecting a new leadership, instead of election, from a ‘strategic point of view’, in the context of the next general elections while another section is pressing for following democratic process.
   It is still uncertain whether the new committee will be selected by the Awami League leadership or elected by the BCL councillors through democratic process, or whether it will be dominated by the irregular and former students or by the regular students.
   A final decision in this regard comes from the Awami League chief, Sheikh Hasina, also the constitutional leader of the Chhatra League, who is now on an overseas tour.
   The section of the AL leaders advocating selection of a new BCL committee, wants that only experienced leaders, no matter if they are regular students or not, should be named in the fresh committee through a selection process.
   ‘If you go for election for a fresh committee, you run the risk of having some inexperienced leaders making their way into the new body and they would be of little or no use to the party in the next general elections,’ said an Awami League leader.
   They want the present committee to continue with minor changes till the next polls as the election of a fresh committee may give rise to new disputes or dissatisfactions.
   The Awami League leaders, who are determined to do away with the 'selection business', said that if the party decides on election of new leadership at every tier of the party and its front organisations, the dedicated activists at the grassroots level would be able to come to the leadership.
   They alleged that some individuals had become central leaders of the BCL with the blessings of senior leaders of the Awami League through a selection process.
   The BCL for the first time in its 58-year history came out from the practice of having a 'pocket committee', when the president and the general secretary of the student body were elected in 2002 through a democratic process.
   Liakat Sikdar and Nazrul Islam Babu, who were behind bars at that time, were elected the president and the general secretary through direct votes.
   Meanwhile, aspirants have started frantic lobbying to get their names at the top of the list of the fresh committee.
   The BCL leaders including those who had completed their studies about a decade ago, began lobbying long before
   the date for the council session was announced and now they are desperately trying to persuade the party high-ups to manage top posts in the committee.
   According to the BCL insiders, aspirants have been lobbying the relatives of Hasina, including her son Sajib Wajed Joy, or
   trying to get the support of influential leaders of their respective region.
   The lobbyists are crowding the offices of influential leaders and their residences, and are not missing any programme that Hasina attends.
   A reunion centring the council will also be held at the Dhanmondi Club ground, which the AL chief will inaugurate on April 3.
   The BCL president, Liakat Sikder, and general secretary, Nazrul Islam Babu, directed presidents and general secretaries of all district units of the student body to take necessary measures in this regard.

Most of the aspirants for the posts of president and general secretary of the Bangladesh Chhatra League, student front of the main opposition Awami League, have not appended their academic certificates with their résumé, in an apparent bid to hide their actual age.
   Six hundred and seventy BCL leaders have submitted their bio-data till Friday evening, aiming to be included in the new committee after the Chhatra League. The new committee will be announced at the BCL council session on
   April 4.
   The student organisation has, for the first time, invited bio-data from leaders who wish to be on the central committee, aiming to keep non-students at bay.
   According to their bio-data, more than half of the aspirants passed Secondary School Certificate examinations before 1995.
   However, sources said the main candidates for the post of president and general secretary had all completed their studies about a decade ago and were nearing 40.
   The BCL constitution does not allow any student over 27 years of age to get involved in BCL politics.
   Article 5 (C) of the BCL constitution says ‘any regular student not more than 27 years-old Bangladeshi studying in any educational institution under any university or educational board may become an executive or a member of the central executive committee. … if studentship of any member comes into break, the executive committee might cancel
   membership of the students or might continue until expire of the tenure’.
   A number of aspirants told New Age that a huge number of aged and non-student leaders occupied posts on the
   present committee because of irregular holding of council
   sessions.
   Only three national council sessions of the Chhatra League were held in the past decade, the latest being on April 3, 2002. A number of aged student leaders were included in the new committee at the session.

The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, acknowledged Friday that the United States has made ‘thousands’ of tactical errors in Iraq.
   But she pleaded that the US and British invasion of Iraq three years ago be judged on its strategic goal -- the ouster of dictator Saddam Hussein to pave the way for democracy -- as she defended Washington's policy in the region.
   ‘I know we've made tactical errors, thousands of them, I'm sure,’ Rice told a gathering of 200 foreign policy experts, local officials and journalists organised by the Chatham House foreign policy institute.
   ‘This could have gone that way, or that could have gone that way. But when you look back in history, what will be judged is did you make the right strategic decision.’
   ‘If you spend all of your time trying to judge this tactical issue or that tactical issue, I think you miss the larger sweep.’
   Rice made her remarks on the first day of a three-day stay in Blackburn, where her British counterpart Jack Straw is the local member of parliament, and where 20 per cent of the population adhere to the Muslim faith.
   Protesters shadowed her around the old Industrial Revolution mill town, denouncing US and British policy in Iraq as she visited a high school and the Blackburn Rovers football team.
   She has previously acknowledged mistakes in Iraq's reconstruction and delays in training Iraqi security forces, but her remarks Friday marked the first time that she has spoken of even the possibility of extensive errors.
   ‘I am quite certain there will be dissertations written about the mistakes of the Bush administration and I will even oversee some of them when I go back to Stanford,’ she said, referring to the university in California where she has taught international relations.
   She defended the ouster of Saddam as ‘the right strategic decision’, saying that he had been a hostile element and that ‘we were not going to have a different kind of Middle East with Saddam at the centre of it’. She added: ‘Decisions, when you look at them in historical perspective, that were thought at the time to have been brilliant, turn out to have been really rather bad -- and vice versa.’

US authorities guarded freed hostage Jill Carroll in Iraq on Friday after guerrillas released her from nearly three months of captivity and posted a video on the Internet showing her praising them.
   The Americans refused to say when the 28-year-old freelance journalist would go home to the United States.
   In video footage whose authenticity could not be verified, Carroll—in an interview with her kidnappers before her release—was seen praising Iraq’s guerrillas and even predicted their victory over the coalition forces.
   ‘I think the mujahideen are very smart and even with all the technology and all the people that the American army has here, they still are better at knowing how to live and work here, more clever,’ Carroll said in answer to a question posed by one of her kidnappers.
   Asked what she meant, Carroll, who was snatched from a Baghdad street on January 7, answered: ‘It makes very clear that the mujahideen are the ones that will win in the end.’
   The video showed her dressed in the same baggy clothes she was seen wearing after her release.
   The interviewer then asked Carroll if she had a message for the US president, George W Bush.
   She smiled before saying: ‘He needs to stop this war. He knows this war is wrong ... He needs to finally admit that to the American people and make the troops go home.’
   Carroll then said she felt guilty being set free while many women remained imprisoned at Baghdad’s US-run Abu Ghraib prison.
   ‘It shows the difference between the mujahedeen and the Americans, it shows the mujahedeen are good people fighting an honourable fight while the Americans are here as an occupying force treating the people in a very bad way,’ she said.
   On Thursday afternoon, Carroll, who worked mainly for the Boston-based Christian Science Monitor, was dropped off near the office of the Iraqi Islamic Party.
   ‘I am happy to be free. I just want to be with my family quickly,’ a composed Carroll, wearing a headscarf, told Baghdad Television, run by the Islamic Party.
   US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad told reporters that ‘no US person had made arrangement with kidnappers’ for her release. He added that none of the kidnappers was in custody yet.

Osama bin Laden has no intention of being taken alive and has designated a ‘special gun’ to be shot with in the event of imminent capture, according to one of the al-Qaeda chief’s former bodyguards.
   Abu Jandal, who was with bin Laden in Afghanistan from 1996 to 2000, told the CBS news magazine ‘60 Minutes’ that his old boss had given strict instructions on what should happen if he was cornered.
   ‘If he was going to be captured, Sheik Osama prefers to be killed,’ Jandal said in the CBS interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
   ‘There was a special gun to be used if Sheik Osama bin Laden was attacked and we were unable to save him, in which case I would have to kill him,’ he said.
   Jandal, who lives in Yemen, said he believed bin Laden was hiding out in Afghanistan rather than Pakistan and warned that his most recent threats of another terror strike on the United States should be taken extremely seriously.
   ‘When Sheik Osama promises something, he does it,’
   he said. ‘So I believe Osama bin Laden is planning a new attack inside the United States, this is certain.’
   In an audiotape broadcast by the Al-Jazeera Arabic television network in January, bin Laden warned that attacks on the US ‘heartland’ were being prepared.
   Jandal also revealed how sheer good fortune had allowed bin Laden to escape a US missile attack—ordered after the 1998 al-Qaeda bombings of two US embassies in Africa—on al-Qaeda training camps near Khost in Afghanistan.
   The night before the attack, bin Laden and his entourage were driving when they reached a fork in the road that would take them to Khost or Kabul.
   ‘He turned to us and said, ‘Khost or Kabul?’ We told him, ‘Let’s just visit Kabul.’ Sheik Osama said, ‘Okay, Kabul’.’
   He also recalled how the world’s most wanted man had strict rules prohibiting cursing in his presence.
   ‘I remember once I used the wrong word, so he suspended me from guard duty for three days,’ Jandal said.

The Rapid Action Battalion on Thursday night detained two more operatives of the banned Islamist outfit, Jamaatul Mujahideen Bangladesh, from a cyber café in the city’s Mirpur area.
   The two alleged militants are: Reza alias Rabi alias Rony alias Nizam, the Dhaka district commander of the outfit and its treasurer, Tayebur Rahman alias Hasan alias Shariful Islam Limon.
   The battalion said that the presence of the two JMB operatives in and around the capital was hinted by its chief, Shaikh Abdur Rahman, second-in-command, Siddiqul Islam Bangla Bhai, three other top kingpins, Ataur Rahman Sunny, Abdul Awal and Hafez Mahmud, during interrogation. Based on their statements, several teams of the battalion’s intelligence wing had launched drives for the two militants.
   On a tip the battalion on Thursday laid a trap around a cyber café at Shah Ali Market at Mirpur section 10.
   At about 9:00pm, the two entered the café to send an email when the plain-clothes lawmen challenged them and took them into custody.
   The two reportedly admitted to their links with the banned outfit.
   Meanwhile, an anonymous person, in the name of JMB, sent a letter to the Dinajpur district and sessions judge, Matiur Rahman, and threatened to bomb him to death.
   The letter, sent through a courier service and received by the peshkar, Shafiuddin of the court, asked the judge to release the JMB activists by April 30, or threatened to bomb him to death, the police said. The security has been tightened in the court following the bomb threat.

A so-called pir and one of his disciples were killed when a mob set ablaze his abode at Batikamari village under Sarishabari upazila in Jamalpur on Thursday night for his alleged anti-social activities.
   The deceased were identified as ‘pir’ Dulal Hossain, 35, of Bhatara village in the same upazila and his disciple, Habibur Rahman.
   Local sources said the so-called pir took refuge at the house of one Abdur Razzak Batikamari village two years ago. Later, he developed an illicit affair with Razzak’s wife and was engaged in drug peddling and other anti-social activities.
   Villagers alleged that the followers of Dulal threatened them with dire consequences as they raised the issue of his anti-social activities at village arbitration.
   Enraged by his activities, the inhabitants of Batikamari village poured kerosene in the den of the pir and set fire to it that badly injured Dulal and Habibur.
   Habibur died on way to Jamalpur General Hospital on Thursday night while Dulal succumbed to his burn injuries at a hospital on Friday morning.
   The deputy commissioner, Mohammad Hanif, and the police super, Biswas Afzal Hossain, visited the spot.

Retailers in Dhaka marked up essential commodities in the past week while the prices of many commodities remained at the high level the reached the week before.
   The prices of rice, sugar, eggs, red lentil, onions and garlic registered a fresh increase in the week. Traders attributed the price increase to short supply and market manipulation by the syndicates of traders and importers.
   ‘Shopping in kitchen markets every day has become a nightmare these days, with most essential commodity prices going up beyond the reach of common people,’ said Emdad Hossain Malek, chief of the market monitoring cell of the Consumers’ Association of Bangladesh.
   Retailers sold rice for higher prices in the city markets on Friday. The wholesale price for a maund (37.3 kilograms) increased by about Tk 20 to Tk 25, the traders said.
   The fine variety of Miniket sold between Tk 28 and Tk 29 a kilogram in the Mohammadpur kitchen market on Friday. The coarse variety BIRRI 28 sold between Tk 18 and Tk 19 a kilogram.
   ‘The prices increased as the stocks are being sold out. The situation may continue till the end of April when new harvest will be available,’ said Bilu Mia, a rice trader at Karwan Bazar.
   Sugar prices, remaining quite stable for a couple of weeks, registered a significant increase on both retail and wholesale markets, selling for Tk 2,050 a maund on Thursday, an increase by Tk 150 in a week.
   Sugar was retailed between Tk 58 and Tk 60 a kilogram on Friday against the earlier price between Tk 53 and Tk 54 the week before.
    Market sources said a drastic decline in the supply of by importers and the mills, most of which are now closed towards the end of the production season, has destabilised the sugar market.
   Importers, who provide for more than 80 per cent of the monthly demand for 90,000 tonnes, have stopped importing or reduced the import on grounds of high price on the international market and high import duty in Bangladesh.
   Fine grade red lentil sold between Tk 52 and Tk 55 a kilogram, up by Tk 5 in a week as it remained in short supply, the retailers said.
   The price of farm eggs sold between Tk 51 and Tk 54 a dozen, an increase by Tk 10 in a couple of weeks.
   The prices of chicken, beef and fishes increased by up to Tk 50 a kilogram in the week.
   Imported Chinese garlic, which sold for Tk 90 a kilogram on Friday at New Market, marked a price increase by Tk 30 in a week.
   The traders said short supply of garlic pushed up the price on the wholesale markets. It sold for Tk 80 a kilogram against the price of Tk 45 the week before.
   Onions sold between Tk 15 and Tk 17 a kilogram at Mohammadpur on Friday, up by Tk 5 in a week, because of short supply, the traders said. Most vegetable prices, however, remained somewhat stable throughout the week.
   Potato sold between Tk 11 and Tk 12 a kilogram, aubergine between Tk 20 and Tk 22, and okra Tk 14 and Tk 16.

A strong earthquake hit western Iran on Friday, killing at least 70 people and devastating villages, a provincial official said.
   More than 1,200 people were injured in an area around the cities of Doroud and Boroujerd in the province of Lorestan, said Ali Barani, head of the provincial emergency team for disasters.
   Some survivors were dug out of the rubble of buildings alive, rescue officials said. In the worst hit areas, brick buildings collapsed into piles of masonry and mud homes were reduced to mounds of dust.
   Barani said 330 villages in the area were severely damaged but the death toll was unlikely to rise much further.
   Strong tremors on Thursday night helped keep the toll down because they drove many to leave their homes and take to the streets well before the big quake hit on Friday morning.
   Moussa Shaban, 42, in the quake-hit village of Garaj, said the earlier shocks had prompted his wife and six children to sleep outside but his aging mother had refused. She was killed when the main magnitude 6.0 quake hit.
   Nearby, a group of women in long black Islamic dress wailed in mourning for Shaban’s mother and another man killed.
   Families in other villages had similar tales about how they had managed to escape being buried under their homes.
   Hospitals were full in Doroud and Boroujerd, state radio reported. The Lorestan governor general, Mohammad Reza Mohseni-Sani, appealed for aid from neighbouring areas.
   Survivors are in urgent need of food, blankets and medical supplies, interior ministry public relations director Mojtaba Mir-Abdollahi told the agency, but said there was ‘no need for international aid.’
   ‘Currently the hospitals of the province are packed with injured, and the wounded are now being sent to neighbouring provinces,’ Mir-Abdollahi said.
   Iran sits astride several major faults in the earth’s crust, and is prone to frequent earthquakes, many of them devastating.
   Media reported that the weather was now sunny, but that inhabitants of Dorud and Borujerd, terrified by the successive tremors, spent much of Thursday night in parks in cool temperatures.
   Some local reporters said that people in the area were not fully satisfied with the rescue operations.
   The Strasbourg Observatory in eastern France announced an earthquake measuring 5.5 on the Richter scale in western Iran at 0116 GMT. It situated the epicenter at 32.86 degrees north and 48.30 degrees east.
   The president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, ordered emergency relief sent to the quake zone, IRNA said. It included sniffer dogs to search for survivors and two helicopters, state television said.
   The United States, which has had no diplomatic ties with Iran since US diplomats were held hostage in Tehran after the 1979 Islamic revolution, also offered humanitarian assistance.
   ‘If you remember, the United States extended earthquake assistance to Iran at the time of the Bam earthquake and I am quite certain we would be more than prepared to do the same,’ the US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said in Britain.
   The 2003 earthquake in Bam, 1,000km southeast of the capital, killed about 31,000.
   In Geneva, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, using information from the Iranian Red Crescent, said rescue teams had been mobilised.

Supermodel Naomi Campbell was arrested at her Park Avenue home on Thursday and charged with assaulting her housekeeper with a cell phone, New York City police said.
   Campbell, who was later released, could face up to seven years in prison after she was charged with second degree assault for throwing a cell phone at housekeeper Ana Scolavino. Police said it struck her on the back of the head and opened a cut that needed four staples.
   Campbell’s lawyer, David Breitbart, said the maid’s injury was self-inflicted. He added that Scolavino had been working for Campbell for two to three months and was being fired because several items were missing from the house. ‘When this happened this morning, all hell broke loose,’ he said.
   Campbell was ordered to return to court on June 27.
   Prosecutors asked the judge to order Campbell to surrender her passport but the request was denied after Breitbart said she was scheduled to fly to West Africa on Friday to do some charity work with Nelson Mandela.
   Campbell, still one of the biggest names in fashion at the age of 35, was fingerprinted and photographed at a police station and arrived at Manhattan Criminal Court ahead of her arraignment wearing a black baseball hat, a white fur poncho and sunglasses. Her hands were cuffed behind her back.
   Prosecutors asked Judge Richard Weinberg to set bail at $3,500, a figure Breitbart scoffed at as ‘unsightly’ for the high profile model, who was released without bail.
   It was not the first time the British-born Campbell has had troubles with the law—in February 2000 she pleaded guilty in a Canadian court to assaulting her former assistant, and was given an absolute discharge, meaning her record was cleared.
   Spotted on the streets of London’s Covent Garden when she was 15, Campbell was the first black model to appear on covers of the French and British editions of Vogue magazine.

Sixty-five journalists were killed in 2005 –13 less than the previous year—and freedom of the press was still under threat in many countries, according to the International Press Institute’s annual report, published Thursday in Vienna.
   Iraq, where 23 journalists were killed last year, was still ‘the most murderous country for journalists to report from,’ the media watchdog said in its report, titled ‘Media Wars: Year Zero,’ which looked at conditions in 175 countries.
   Nine journalists were found dead in the Philippines, three in Bangladesh, and 27 in 18 other countries across Africa, Latin America, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East, IPI added.
   The institute, which was founded in New York in 1950 and is present in 120 countries, also emphasised restrictions on press freedoms around the world.
   ‘In all the regions of the world, governments are intent on hindering the media’s work,’ by using press laws, emergency decrees, false arrest and imprisonment, physical violence and intimidation, IPI said last year, on the occasion of World Press Freedom Day.
   ‘In many countries, the institutions of government refuse to provide up-to-date information, ministers decline to be interviewed and individual journalists or media organizations are excluded from press conferences,’ it said then.
   IPI director Johann Fritz pointed out a British draft legislation ‘prohibiting the ‘glorification’ of terrorism’ following the July bombings in London and an EU discussion over the role of the media in ‘radicalising’ terrorism.
   These steps ‘signalled a shift in the balance between liberty and security and shaped the political debate over the controversial cartoons of Mohammed published by the Danish newspaper ‘Jyllands-Poster,’ he wrote in his foreword to the latest report.
   Fritz criticised China which ‘is embracing capitalism without introducing the requisite freedoms’ and ‘American computer companies (who) helpfully censored their Internet software’ in compliance with Beijing to establish themselves in the country.
   ‘In 2005, more journalists were imprisoned in Nepal than in any other country,’ the report pointed out, also criticising countries like the US and France, where journalists were prosecuted for refusing to reveal their sources.
   In Africa, the institute said freedom of the press was ‘being swiftly eroded’ and legislation was used to hinder the work of journalists, in particular in Zimbabwe where the ‘government has used every means at its disposal to silence the media.’
   ‘The situation for the mass media in Russia continues to be difficult,’ it also said, adding ‘in addition to the attacks on journalists, the media have engaged in a great deal of self-censorship, which was demonstrated by the coverage of the January social-benefit reform protests.’
   IPI however praised among others Chile, Guatemala, Honduras and Panama for getting rid of so-called ‘desacato’ or insult laws.
   The institute will hold its next annual congress in May in the Scottish city of Edinburgh.

At least 57 people, including Westerners and Asians, were killed when an overcrowded wooden leisure boat sank off the coast of Bahrain late Thursday, turning a local company dinner cruise into tragedy.
   Among the dead were 17 Indians and 13 Britons, interior ministry spokesman colonel Tarek al-Hassan told AFP on Friday as rescuers continued to comb the Gulf waters for bodies and survivors.
   Bahrain’s security information director Mohammed bin Deina said passengers of 16 nationalities were on board, including 25 Britons, 20 Filipinos, 10 South Africans, 10 Egyptians and a number of Indians, Americans and Bangladeshis.
   Bodies were being brought on boats to the shore of the tiny Gulf island state, where they were wrapped in white sheets, while shocked survivors were huddled in wool blankets.
   The traditional wooden boat known as a Banoosh had been chartered for a dinner cruise for a local company outing and was carrying 137 people when it capsized about a mile (almost two kilometres) out to sea.
   ‘The boat was sailing slowly when it tilted around 30 degrees on one side, then tilted suddenly on the other side and started to sink,’ said Indian survivor Kungumon Kuzhiyilthekkathil.
   ‘I was on the second floor when I suddenly fell in the sea,’ said the 48-year-old employee of the company which organised the ill-fated trip. ‘One of the passengers saved me. I consider myself lucky.’
   The boat’s owner accused the tourist company that chartered the boat of overloading the vessel and forcing the captain to sail.
   Of the 57 bodies recovered so far, 11 remain unidentified, while 67 passengers survived and 13 remain missing, interior ministry official Hassen told a news conference.
   Other victims included five Pakistanis, four South Africans, three Filipinos, two Singaporeans, one Irish and one German, he said, adding that there was one American survivor.

There was no Bangladeshi among the 57 bodies recovered so far from a boat that sank off Bahrain, a foreign ministry spokesman said on Friday.
   Of the victims, 17 are Indians, 13 Britons, five Pakistanis, four South Africans, three Filipinos, two Singaporeans, one Irish and one German. The remaining 11 are yet to be identified.
   Sixty-seven people survived the Thursday night disaster and 13 have remained missing, the sources added.

The price of garlic shot up to Tk 90 a kilogram on Thursday, almost double the price a week ago, because of shortage of supply of the essential spice, artificially created by syndicates of unscrupulous traders and importers to make quick money, according to market sources.
   At the city wholesale markets, a kilogram of fine grade Chinese garlic shot up to Tk 85 against Tk 45 just a week ago.
   ‘Price of the spice has gone up abnormally in wholesale markets,’ said Abu Taher, a grocer at New Market in the city, attributing the price hike to short supply.
   Large sized Chinese garlic sold between Tk 55 and Tk 60 in the city’s retail markets a week ago, while small-sized garlic of local variety, which sold at Tk 40 per kg a few days ago, was selling at Tk 70 on Thursday.
    Ganesh Sarker, a trader at Shyambazaar, the country’s largest wholesale market of spices, located in the old part of the city, said importers had slashed supply of garlic drastically on pretext of rising import costs.
   Rafiq Mia, a spice importer and leader of the Dhaka metropolitan Perishables Importers’ Association, claimed that in China the price of garlic had shot up to $900 per tonne against $500, a month ago.
   He estimates that about 30,000 tonnes of garlic were imported from China every year.
   Large-sized Chinese and Indian garlic mostly meets the annual demand for about 100,000 tonnes of the spice in the country as local farmers produce only a small quantity of garlic annually.
    Some wholesalers in the city kitchen markets alleged that syndicates of importers often make windfall profits by manipulating prices of spices creating artificial crisis.

A suspected leader of underground Purba Banglar Communist Party (Janajuddha) was killed in Rapid Action Battalion-criminal encounter at Jugirhuda in Alamdanga upazila of Chuadanga early Friday, raising the ‘crossfire’ death toll to 517 since June 2004.
   Rezaul Haque alias Kalu, 28, of Alamdanga, who was wanted in five murder and one other case, was handed over to RAB by the Alamdanga people on Thursday.
   According to RAB, the encounter took place when a RAB team took Kalu to the village to recover his firearms, and his accomplices opened shots at the team members prompting them to retaliate.
   Kalu received bullets as he tried to escape. He was taken to a nearby hospital where the doctors declared him dead, claimed RAB. A shutter gun and two bullets were recovered from the spot.

At least 10 persons, including vice-president of the Chittagong Medical College Students Union, were injured in a clash between the activists of Jatiyatabadi Chhatra Dal and Islami Chhatra Shibir early Friday.
   The CMC sources said 14 rooms of a dormitory of the college were also
   vandalised during the clash between the student fronts of the ruling four-party alliance, Bangladesh Nationalist Party and Jamaat-e-Islami Bangladesh.
   The police said the clash erupted at around 1:30am when a group of JCD men were singing loudly on the occasion of the birthday of one of their fellows at room 8/B of the college dormitory.
   The Shibir men asked them to stop singing, but they did not pay heed to it resulting in the clash. The activists of both the parties attacked each other with sticks and iron rods.

The Bangladesh Rifles seized some 16,000 Indian chickens from Comilla and Rajshahi, and arrested nine persons in connection with the incidents.
   The New Age Comilla correspondent reported that a truck carrying 10,500 Indian chickens worth about Tk 4.75 lakh was seized from near Pornamati Bazaar on the Dhaka-Chittagong Highway at 10:30am on Friday.
   BDR sources said the chickens being taken to Chittagong were burnt later at the Comilla Police Line field in fear of spreading the bird flu in the country.
   The BDR members also arrested the driver, and the helper in this connection.
   The New Age Rajshahi correspondent reported that the BDR men recovered 5,500 Indian contraband chicks from Bulanpur ghat in the district on Thursday night.
   The chicks were being supplied to different poultry farms in the city. Later the chickens were burnt near the Rajshahi customs warehouse in apprehension of outbreak of the bird flu.
   The BDR members also picked up seven persons from city’s Barnali and Shalbagan areas on Friday and handed them over to the police.

Assailants hurled a bomb at the office of a non-governmental organisation at Maheswarpasha in the Khulna city on Friday night.
   No casualty was reported in the explosion, the police said. The bomb went off at about 7:15pm with a bang, sending a wave of panic in the locality.
   The reason for the bomb attack could not be known immediately.