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The military-backed interim government of Fakhruddin Ahmed is becoming increasingly more beleaguered by not only the pressures of balancing its two somewhat disparate promises — of delivering free, fair and corruption-free elections, and of holding them ‘at the earliest’ — but also by the multifarious interests of the different quarters that hold influence over it, sources close to the government and those quarters have indicated to New Age.
   While there is a mounting public pressure on Fakruddin, the chief adviser, to announce a timeframe for his unelected government’s tenure, the various sources have confirmed that, two weeks into its term, the administration and its backers are yet undecided about the government’s projected time in power, its agenda, and the modalities to adopt to push through whatever that agenda ends up being.
   Compounding the difficulties of the constant wrangling between those who prefer a ‘soft’ approach and those who advocate more brutish ways, the government now finds itself in the middle of covert and overt attempts by quarters including the military top-brass, foreign diplomatic missions, civil administration, major political parties, and certain advisers to the government themselves to protect and advance their own interests, cabinet sources have said.
   And according to political sources, the government is known to be feeling somewhat abandoned by its foreign backers, in particular, as certain diplomatic missions in Dhaka have already begun ‘negotiations’ with the major political parties with a view to safeguarding their own interests, strategic and economic, if and when any of the parties come to power.
   ‘The government, and especially the council of advisers, has very little idea about either what the tenure of the interim administration will be or to what extent it will take forward the sweeping reforms that the chief adviser has promised to the nation in his address last week,’ a cabinet source told New Age.
   ‘It has become difficult for the chief adviser and the council to freely prepare a work plan to hold credible polls and to hand over power to an elected government within a timeframe, as they are under tremendous pressure from various quarters that are trying to protect conflicting interests,’ a BNP policymaker told New Age following a long consultation with an adviser.
   An Awami League leader with a military background told New Age, ‘A section of the top officers in the security forces that played a crucial role in the recasting of the interim government are advocating to delay parliamentary polls and to conduct anti-crime and anti-corruption drives against political leaders over a sustained period. There are other groups in the military who want that the troops should return to the barracks after holding credible polls as soon as possible, preferably within six to ten months.’
   The cabinet source, claiming that no concrete policy decisions have yet been made, said rather resignedly, ‘We are under pressure from all sides. We can make out some of the interests — military, foreign, partisan, even personal. But sometime it becomes difficult to understand who is rooting for whom!’
   The situation is reported to have become even more complicated as news has filtered through to the administration that certain foreign diplomatic missions have held meetings with different political parties and their representatives, covertly negotiating to either maintain or establish the strategic and business interests of their respective countries.
   These meetings, alongside a sudden shift in the public stance of certain political parties in favour of early elections, has apparently sent a worrying signal to the interim government and its backers, sources in the political parties have claimed.
   A top Awami League leader confirmed to New Age that different diplomatic missions were ‘continuing engagement with our party’ and had discussed ‘long-term strategic relationships’ during these meetings.
   M Shamsul Islam, a member of the BNP’s highest policymaking body, the national standing committee, would not confirm in so many words, but told New Age on Tuesday,
   ‘[The foreigners] are trying to keep us divided only to protect their interests.’
   The Jamaat-e-Islami secretary general, Ali Ahsan Mohammad Mujahid, went further in claiming, ‘America and India are trying to influence the political course here. The UK is supporting them.’
   A senior official of the Washington-based National Democratic Institute told New Age, ‘The meetings [with political parties] were designed to assess possible strategies of major players in the political field.’

The military-backed interim government looks set to formulate a full fiscal year’s budget for 2007-08, finance ministry officials have hinted.
   It will be the first time in more than two decades that a full fiscal year’s budget is formulated in the absence of a parliament.
   However, the interim government’s economic agenda remains as unclear as its intended tenure in power.
   Also, the government is yet to gear up, or give a sense of direction to, its economic machinery to initiate the budget-making process, which usually starts six months before the budget is unveiled.
   The finance ministry officials said the formal budget-making process for the next fiscal year is unlikely to start before mid-February, as the government has not yet made it clear to ministries and divisions about its economic priorities.
   The process starts with formal meetings between the finance ministry and 14 ministries and divisions, tasked with outlining their own annual expenditure plans under a medium-term budgetary framework. But no circular has been made so far in this regard.
   The finance ministry has also not made its schedule for holding consultation meetings with all other ministries to take stock of their demands and financial ability of the government to meet those, the officials added.
   ‘We are yet to be given any new directive although the formal budget-making process is about to start. We guess, they [the council of advisers] will make it with a set of agendas that may be different from those of the political government,’ an official concerned said.
   The Fakhruddin Ahmed administration is yet to give any directive on whether or not to change the budgetary priorities either, he added.
   The finance ministry had earlier asked 14 ministries and divisions under the medium-term budgetary framework to submit the proposed structures of their respective budgets for the next fiscal year within December 31. ‘We got a lot of inputs and will harmonise those once we hold formal meetings,’ the official said.
   The ministry has not yet planned any consultation with various stakeholders outside the government machinery that were witnessed in recent years to give the highly-bureaucratic budget-making process a participatory look.
   The National Board of Revenue, plagued by a poor earnings performance and change of two chairmen in two months, also looks confused about making any projection and inviting the private sector for their inputs for the budget.
   The last time a non-elected government formulated a national budget in Bangladesh was in 1985 when M Syeduzzaman, as the finance minister of HM Ershad’s martial law regime, authored the budget, not rubberstamped by parliament.
   The finance adviser to the current interim government, AB Mirza Azizul Islam, is most likely to become the first man in more than 20 years to present a full-fledged budget on behalf of a government without any mandate for the job and without the existence of the parliament.There is no scope to rubberstamp with retrospective effect the supplementary budget of the current (outgoing) fiscal at the yearend in the absence of parliament, although the government is constitutionally obliged to get its annual budget passed by the parliament.
   Article 87 (1) of the constitution stipulates: ‘There shall be laid before Parliament, in respect of each financial year, a statement of the estimated receipts and expenditure of the Government for that year.’ Also, Article 83 says: ‘No tax shall be levied or collected except by or under the authority of an Act of Parliament.’
   In 1996, finance adviser to the then caretaker government Wahiduddin Mahmud prepared an interim budget for the 1996-97 fiscal year but the parliament during the tenure of the Awami League rubberstamped the budget which was also fine-tuned by the subsequent finance minister SAMS Kibria.

A law proposed to the US Senate seeking a ban on import of ‘sweatshop goods’ may pose a serious threat to garment exports from countries including Bangladesh, often criticised for poor treatment to workers.
   A Senate release said, ‘a bill to amend the Tariff Act of 1930 to prohibit the import, export, and sale of goods made with sweatshop labour, and for other purposes,’ referred to Senate committee on January 23.
   ‘The bill was referred to the Committee on Finance,’ the senate release said, describing it as the latest major action backed by five cosponsors from both Republican and Democrat senators.
   Labour right activists in Bangladesh fear that the legislation, if passed, might drastically affect the country’s nearly $3 billion annual apparel sales to the USA at a time when organised global campaigns are going on to brand the apparel factories here as ‘sweatshops’.
   ‘This bill is very simple,’ Senator Byron Dorgan, who introduced the bill, said in a statement, released by the US senate on Tuesday. ‘It would make it illegal to bring the product of sweatshop factories – factories where workers are abused in violation of that country’s labour laws — into this country.’
   The proposed bill defines a sweatshop as a factory that defies core labour standards and abuses its workers.
   It seeks to impose a $10,000 fine for each violation and allow US retailers to sue their competitors in American courts for selling merchandises produced in sweatshop factories.
   The bill, titled ‘The Decent Working Conditions and Fair Competition Act,’ was introduced earlier on June 8, 2006 by Dorgan, who has recently been elected as the chairman of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee.
   In the bill, the core labour standards were elaborated as right of association, right to organise and bargain collectively, prohibition of use of any force or compulsory labour, a minimum age for employment of children and acceptable lawful conditions of work with minimum wages, working hours and occupational safety and health.
   The Senator referred to investigations that revealed abysmally low wages and abuses, and working conditions amounting more or less to slavery, of migrant Bangladeshi workers in Jordanian sweatshops. Dorgan proposed amendment to the US Tariff Act 1930 that banned ‘convict goods’ (products made by convict labour in foreign countries) and prohibited entry of goods made by ‘sweatshop’ labourers.
    The American Senator was critical of garment buyers including some big global brands of American origin. ‘It’s all part of a global strategy of big corporate interests to find the cheapest possible labour and to exploit free trade agreements.’
   SM Fazlul Hoque, president of the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters Association, said he was unaware of the proposed bill. ‘I will gather information about it and comment later,’ he told New Age.
   Hoque, however, claimed that local garment manufacturers are making a lot of improvements in safeguarding labour rights in recent times.
   Bahrane Sultan, president of the Jago Garments Workers Federation, said, ‘Such US legislation, once okayed, will pose a severe threat to Bangladesh as many factories here are branded by global right groups as sweatshops.’
   ‘The legislation will bring some good to garment workers in developing countries if it is applied to individual factories and does not discriminate against any particular country,’ he, however, said.
   The US market is the single largest destination of Bangladesh’s apparels, which account for 77 per cent of the country’s $10.5 billion plus annual export trades.
   During January-November 2006, US buyers imported $2.7 billion worth of garments from Bangladesh, where more than 5,000 factories employ around 2.5 million workers, mainly females.

The delay by the previous government in issuing voice over internet protocol licence has allowed private operators to make several thousand crores of takas in five years.
   Voice over internet protocol, also known as IP or internet telephony, remains illegal as the government failed to issue licences to private sector operators although the process was initiated in 2003.
   IP telephony is a technology to transmit voice calls in digitised packets over internet protocol, which makes calls cheaper.
   ‘Several thousand crores of takas might have been siphoned off by illegal VoIP operators in five years,’ said Zia Safdar, general manager (security and surveillances) of the Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board on Friday.
   Zia, however, said there was no information on the exact number of VoIP operators in the country as such business centres have mushroomed over the years.
   Sources in the telecoms industry said illegal VoIP operators, which mushroomed during the period of the BNP-led four party-alliances government because of lax monitoring, earned more than Tk 3,000 crore in five years as an unofficial estimate says the state-owned Bangladesh Telegraph and Telephone Board, the sole authority to provide overseas calls, has lost about Tk 600 crore a year in revenue cause of illegal IP telephony.
   According to the telecoms policy 1998, the board is the sole provider of international calls to and from Bangladesh till 2010 and other operators must carry their overseas calls through the international gateway of the telephone board.
   Industry insiders, however, blamed the lack of coordination among the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission, posts and telecommunications ministry and the telephone board for the delay in issuing licence as the government always wanted to safeguard the board’s earning in overseas call segment which accounted for 40 per cent of its annual revenue.
   ‘The telecoms regulatory commission, telecoms ministry and the telephone board were responsible for the delay in issuing VoIP licence,’ said Akhtaruzzaman Manju, former president of the Internet Service Providers’ Association, on Friday.
   Some influential people, close to the previous government and some corrupt officials of the telecoms ministry and the telephone board involved in illegal VoIP business, were also responsible for delaying the issuance of licence, he said.
   Akhtaruzzaman said as the cabinet legalised VoIP in November 2003, the association repeatedly urged the regulatory commission to issue licences which could earn the government a huge amount of revenue, but the commission failed to do so.
   The BTRC officials said the commission time and again tried to open VoIP to private sector after cabinet approval, but it failed to do so because of a row over the selection of routing medium to deliver the traffic.
   ‘We tried to open VoIP to private sector, but the telecoms ministry and the telephone board have been opposing the idea of opening VoIP through VSAT from the very beginning fearing revenue losses from operators in the absence of proper monitoring,’ said a high official of the commission.
   The telephone board, however, continued to lose money in the international call segment by more than 50 per cent in few years while the illegal operators, blessed by the influential political quarters and government officials, made fortune in the business.
   After much foot-dragging, the regulatory commission towards the end of the immediate-past government tenure, however, invited applications for VoIP licence in August and awarded 51 licences in October.
   The commission later refrained from issuing the licence on a High Court stay order as some aggrieved applicants filed a writ petition challenging the commission’s decision on issuing licence without setting up common platform exchanges to route VoIP traffic. The telephone board also asked the commission to refrain from issuing licence as it was yet to set up the common platform exchanges.
   The government earlier decided to set up four VoIP exchanges — in Dhaka, Chittagong, Sylhet and Bogra — to monitor voice traffic data and ensure revenue earnings from VoIP operators which would be managed by the telephone board.
   But the establishment of the four VoIP exchanges remained stalled for more than a year as the board was yet to complete the evaluation of its third time tender for setting up the exchanges.
   The government earlier cancelled two tenders in this regard because of corruption in the evaluation of tender process.
   The Rapid Action Battalion, meanwhile, began drives on December 26 against VoIP business and busted about 20 such centres in Dhaka and elsewhere.
   The revenue earning of the telephone board increased signifinactly after the drives had began as most international calls are now routed through the telephone board gateway.

The Rapid Action Battalion seized voice over internet protocol equipment from two illegal telephony centres at Jigatala and Badda early Friday.
   In a raid at Badda, the battalion seized a large number of internet telephony devices from a shop on the third floor of Nur Villa.
   The devices included 18 routers, 210 tellulars to use mobile SIMs with landline, 10 uninterrupted power supply systems and two generators.
   The lawmen could not arrest anyone during the raid carried out just after midnight. The two owners of the centre, Mohammad Hasan and Azharul Islam Manik, had reportedly left before the raid.
   In another raid at Jigatala, a battalion team seized VoIP equipment from Latifa Aloy, on Road No 4/A at about 1:30am.
   The equipment included 65 tellulars, 62 mobile SIM cards, a computer and 65 adapters.
   The battalion arrested the shopkeeper, Rafiqul Islam Babul, on charge of illegally running the business.
   The battalion said Babul used to the run the business renting an apartment of the building.
   The battalion earlier busted three more VoIP centres at Azimpur on Wednesday and at Ahmednagar and Paikpara on Thursday and seized a large number of devices.

The second anniversary of death of former finance minister Shah AMS Kibria, also a former Awami League lawmaker, will be observed today with his family calling for reinvestigation of the case of the murder that took place two years ago.
   Kibria, a career diplomat-turned-politician, was killed along with five in a grenade attack on an Awami League rally at Baidyer Bazar in Habiganj, his own constituency, on January 27, 2005.
   Several political and socio-cultural organisations will hold various programmes to mark the day. Kibria’s family will hold programmes to observe the day.
   The programmes include placing flowers at the grave of Kibria at the Banani graveyard in the morning and saying prayers seeking peace of the soul, recitation from the Qur’an and prayer session at 4:00pm in his residence.
   The Bangladesh Foundation for Development Research will hold a Kibria memorial lecture on ‘Economic policy of Shah ASM Kibria’ in the auditorium of the Institute of Diploma Engineers at Kakrail in Dhaka on Sunday.
   Economist Atiur Rahman will deliver the keynote paper and Kabir Chowdhury will preside over the programme.
   A publication ceremony of a collection of essays written by Kibria and a photo exhibition on his life and work will be held on January 31.
   The United News of Bangladesh, meanwhile, reports that the masterminds of the killing are yet to be detected.
   ‘Who are the masterminds? We’re not satisfied as only some low-profile people were arrested. We demand punishment for the culprits; else, other people may be killed by them,’ said Reza Kibria, son of the late Kibria.
   He also raised a question about the source of the grenades, used in the attack. ‘Same grenades were used in the August 21 attack on the Awami League rally in Dhaka and in the attack on British high commissioner in Sylhet. If the source of the grenades had been detected, my father would not have been killed.’
   He hoped that the government would take steps for a fair and neutral investigation of the killing so that the masterminds could be spotted and punished.
   ‘My mother has sent a letter to chief adviser on January 19 and we are demanding re-investigation of the case. We also want to meet the chief adviser in this regard,’ he said.
   Reza also expressed his gratitude to the media for continued support for his family after the killing of his father. ‘Where we cannot depend on the government or the police, we need to depend on the media.’

`The director general of the Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education, Md Nazim Uddin, has thrown in the towel in the fight against corruption by a syndicate at the directorate, which was reported by the National Security Intelligence as early as in 2005.
   The directorate can do nothing against the syndicate, although it has noticed that a group of officials and employees at the directorate has been taking bribes and committing various other irregular activities for years, he told New Age on Monday.
   ‘The immediate-past director general was more powerful than me as she was the wife of a minister of the BNP-led government,’ Nazim, who replaced Dilara Hafiz and took over the office early this month, said. ‘Yet, as far as I know, she completed her tenure without taking any action against this syndicate.’
   According to Nazim, ‘the directorate can do nothing against them [the corrupt officials and employees] as they have links with political and education ministry bigwigs’.
   ‘The directorate is understaffed. It is too tough to carry out the huge tasks here with this manpower, with a number of them involved in corruption and irregularities,’ he said. ‘Actually, I am helpless… I now wish I can complete my tenure that ends in October this year and go into retirement in peace.’
   The NSI in a report to the immediate-past prime minister, Khaleda Zia, and the education ministry in early 2005 listed the rates of bribe regularly charged by a ring of officials and employees at the directorate to process files.
   The report dubbed the directorate as a ‘corruption bhaban’ and detailed the graft and irregularities committed there.
   According to the report, teachers and employees of different educational institutions have to pay the syndicate up to Tk 1 lakh to get their files on confirmations of service, transfer, posting, promotion, monthly pay order, pension, legal suits, etc cleared.
   ‘Officials and employees at all sections of the directorate are more or less involved with corrupt practices and they do not and cannot do anything without taking bribe,’ it said. ‘A number of lower division employees fix the amounts of the bribes and collect that on behalf of some high officials.’
   The report recommended immediate transfer of 14 officials and employees who led the corruption racket.
   Saleh Uddin Selim, a record keeper at the directorate and also a leader of the association of Class III and IV government employees, topped the list of racketeers in the intelligence report that recommended that he should be sent on forced retirement or transferred immediately.
   ‘Instead of taking action against the corrupt employees, our newly-appointed director general, too, seems to have developed a “good term” with the syndicate,’ a professor of a government college in the city alleged, when talking to New Age on Friday.
   ‘In March 2006, my recruitment was declared illegal as per a recommendation of Syful Islam, an assistant director of administration and finance at the directorate,’ Shahjahan Alam Saju, convener of the Bangladesh Teachers-Employees’ Unity Council and principal of Bangabandhu Technical and Commercial College, said.
   ‘Syful asked for a huge sum of money from me in June 2005 and as I refused to pay him, my salary was held up,’ Saju claimed.
   When contacted last week, Syful refused to talk to newsmen.
   The directorate is tasked with the administration of more than five lakh government and non-government teachers and employees of about 30,000 educational institutions across the country.

The law enforcement agencies had failed till Friday to nab any of the 25 accused in the Oriental Bank scam case including Orion Group chairman Obaidul Karim and the bank’s managing director CM Koyes Sami.
   Kazi Manjur Hossain, a senior assistant vice president in charge of the bank’s human resources department, in a case filed with Tejgaon police station on Thursday accused Obaidul, Koyes and 23 others of plundering more than Tk 488 crore between 2003 and June 2006.
   The police claimed that several of their teams raided the residences of the accused on Thursday night and Friday but were yet to strike any success.
   The other accused in the case are executive VP Quamrul Islam, senior AVP AQM Mahmudullah, SAVP Mohammad Yamin, SAVP Manjurul Alim, AVP Fazlur Rahman, AVP Alamgir Kabir, AVP Abul Hossain Chokdar, assistant executive officer Saiful Aziz Pavel and assistant officer Tariqul Islam of the bank’s head office, SAVP ANM Arifur Rahman, AVP Mahiuddin Ahmed, AVP Syed Mahmud Hasan and senior officer Touhid Uddin Khondokar of its principal branch, AVP Alamgir Kabir, executive officer Emdad Hossain Bhuiyan and senior officer Firoz Kabir of its Nawabpur branch, EVP Ishtiaq Ahmed Chowdhury, SAVP Mushtaq Ahmed and AVP Syed Safarraj Shah of Karwan Bazar branch, and VP AZM Saleh, AVP Khondokar Shahruk Ahmed and executive officer Arifur Rahman of Mirpur Road branch.
   The case has been handed over to the Criminal Investigation Department of police and an assistant superintendent of police, Syed Momin Hossain, assigned as its investigation officer.

The Human Rights Watch on Friday accused Bangladesh security forces of a series of unlawful killings and arbitrary arrests under a state of emergency and called on authorities to halt the abuses.
   The New York-based group called on officials to investigate the deaths and bring those responsible to justice, warning that the country’s international image would suffer if nothing was done.
   Quoting local rights groups, it said ‘security forces are implicated in a spate of extrajudicial killings since a state of emergency was declared in the country on January 11’ to end weeks of political unrest.
   ‘The killings have been attributed to members of the army, the police, and the Rapid
   Action Battalion, an elite anti-crime and anti-terrorism force,’ it added.
   Bangladesh’s leading human rights group, the Law and Mediation Centre, has said at least five people have been killed in army custody and 22,000 arrested since then.
   ‘A state of emergency cannot justify killings by the security forces,’ Brad Adams, director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, said in the statement.
   ‘The government should put a quick stop to these abuses.’
   The arrests follow a nationwide crackdown on the ‘corrupt’ and criminals designed to pave the way for free and fair elections.
   ‘It’s a terrible situation. We have asked the government to stop it or at least follow transparency and due legal process in these arbitrary arrests,’ said Sultana Kamal, executive director of the Law and Mediation Centre.
   Another human rights group, Odhikar, said as many as 19 people were killed in the first 10 days of the emergency.
   Odhikar said the deaths were either in custody from torture or in what the security forces attributed to ‘crossfire’ with ‘criminals’ during arrest.
   The state of emergency was imposed at the same time as elections scheduled for January 22 were postponed after months of political unrest and violence on the streets.
   Bangladesh is now being governed by a interim government which is widely seen as backed by the military.
   Killings in custody have been a major human rights issue in Bangladesh. During the last large-scale military deployment in 2002, at least 50 people reportedly died in army custody in unclear circumstances.
   No military personnel are known to have been held criminally responsible for any of the deaths.
   The Human Rights Watch called for an independent inquiry into allegations of extrajudicial killings.
   ‘The government’s first step must be to issue a direct order not to kill suspects in custody,’ Adams said, and urged the government to investigate the deaths and follow due legal process to make arrests.
   ‘The government should then aggressively investigate and hold all those who violated the law accountable, or its reputation inside Bangladesh and abroad will suffer,’ he said.
   ‘Arrests must be carried out in accordance with the law and due process, not by rounding up huge numbers of people who may or may not have broken the law,’ he added.
   The Human Rights Watch said deaths in custody could damage Bangladesh’s global image as a major contributor to UN peacekeeping forces.
   ‘Extrajudicial killings by Bangladesh’s security forces put the country’s reputation as a respectable contributor to UN peacekeeping forces at risk,’ Adams said.
   As of January 1, Bangladesh was contributing 9,681 military and police to UN peacekeeping operations, numbers second only to Pakistan.

US president, George W Bush, faces an unprecedented rebellion from fellow Republicans sceptical of his unpopular new Iraq war strategy that could leave him increasingly isolated in his final two years in office.
   The growing dissent has emerged since Republicans lost control of Congress to Democrats, victorious in November elections largely on the back of anti-Iraq war sentiment.
   John Mueller, a political sciences professor at Ohio State University, drew a parallel with the Vietnam War political climate of nearly 40 years ago.
   ‘It’s like the Democrats under (then-president Lyndon) Johnson,’ Mueller said, referring to the Democratic president’s loss of support within his own party amid discontent over the Vietnam conflict.
   And the Republican rebellion is ‘just starting,’ Mueller said, noting that politicians were already carving independent positions ahead of the 2008 presidential and legislative elections.
   The realignment of Republican eminence grise John Warner, former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, to the sceptics’ camp rocked the president’s party.
   For four years, the former US Navy secretary had not hesitated to confront the White House in demanding respect of the Geneva Conventions on treatment of prisoners of war, but he had offered unfailing support to the military.
   On Wednesday night, the Republican titan proposed a resolution aimed at expressing the Senate’s disapproval of Bush’s decision to send an additional 21,500 troops to Iraq.
   More moderate than a non-binding resolution adopted Wednesday by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that rejected Bush’s plan as ‘not in the national interest,’ Warner’s proposal seems to have a good chance to be adopted by the full Senate next week.
   It already has the declared support of at least three
   other Republicans and six Democrats.
   And Republican leaders refrained from blocking the resolution by a procedural manoeuvre, preferring to allow lawmakers to vote their conscience on the issue which had cost the party its majority in Congress in the November elections.
   According to conservative columnist Robert Novak, loyalty to the White House is in free fall.
   In an article published Thursday by The Washington Post, Novak quoted an influential Republican lawmaker who requested anonymity as saying: ‘The president and his aides are irrelevant and out of touch, removed from realising what happened in the election.’
   In this context, Bush’s appeal for cooperation during his State of the Union address Tuesday seems destined for failure.
   ‘Our country is pursuing a new strategy in Iraq, and I ask you to give it a chance to work,’ he said.
   Efforts to explain the rationale for the US troop’s level increase seem headed for failure, despite a flurry of such meetings organised by the White House.
   ‘After a three-hour security briefing with senior intelligence officials, three meetings at the White House and a number of hearings, I’m even more sceptical now than I was before about how this would impact our national security,’ Republican Senator George Voinovich said Wednesday.
   Despite the growing isolation, vice president Dick Cheney insists the White House will stick to its plan.
   ‘With all of the debate over whether or not we ought to stay in Iraq, where the pressure is from some quarters to get out of Iraq, if we were to do that, we would simply validate the terrorist’s strategy, that says the Americans will not stay to complete the task—that we don’t have the stomach for the fight,’ Cheney said in an interview Wednesday with television network CNN.
   That argument still has traction among certain ultra-conservative lawmakers.
   ‘The worst thing we can do as a Congress is to undercut the president internationally. Passing a resolution that is not binding—the president is the commander in chief—I think sends exactly the wrong message,’ Texas senator Kay Bailey Hutchison said.

Martial law was lifted in more than half of Thailand Friday nearly two months after the move was approved by its post-coup cabinet, a government spokesman said.
   ‘The king has signed the royal command to abolish martial law in 41 (of 76) Thai provinces including Bangkok,’ government spokesman Yongyuth Mayalarp said.
   ‘It has already been published in the royal gazette. It is effective today,’ he added.
   Martial law was imposed across Thailand a day after army chief general Sonthi Boonyaratglin seized power in a bloodless coup on September 19, toppling the elected government of Thaksin Shinawatra.
   The lifting of the controversial law was announced by the military-installed prime minister on November 28, and was due to take effect pending approval from King Bhumibol Adulyadej–a formality that normally takes a few days.
   Most analysts predicted that the law would be scrapped across half of Thailand before the king’s birthday on December 5, but instead the weeks ticked by with little news on the matter.
   Yongyuth did not say why it had taken two months for the lifting of martial law to take effect.

The Bangladesh Inland Water Transport Authority will begin a four-day drive on Sunday to pull down 560 illegal structures on the banks of the River Buriganga, stretching from Kholamora to Fatulla.
   The water transport agency, along with the Dhaka district administration, will conduct the drive till Thursday except for Tuesday, which is a public holiday, said an official of the agency.
   Former BNP lawmaker Nasiruddin Ahmed Pintu owns illegal structures at Kamrangirchar, former Awami League lawmaker Haji Mohammad Selim owns a market set up illegally at Nalgala, former BNP lawmaker Salahuddin Ahmed some illegal structures, including a portion of a five-storey building, at Kadamtala, Golam Hossain some illegal structures at Shyampur and Hafez Mohammad Kamal owns some illegal structures at Kamalbagh, the official said.
   ‘We have identified 670 illegal structures, but 110 of them are kept out of the drive because of legal disputes. The district administration on January 18 issued notices asking 560 owners to shift such structures in a week,’ he said.
   Most identified illegal structures were demolished during earlier drives carried out by the water transport agency.
   One hundred and seventy-six structures on the bank of the Turag, including illegal structures owned by BNP leader Monwar Hossain Dipjal, an actor of the Bangla films, have also been identified for demolition, he said.
   The water transport agency in its latest drive demolished a market of 157 shops owned by Dipjal, but the land was again occupied for lack of permanent structure for its protection.
   Some traders of sand and brick also occupied a large portion of the bank of the Turag, he said.
   In the absence of any such drives, the occupation of the bank of the Sitalakhya continues unabated. There has been an allegation that former BNP lawmaker has grabbed a portion of the river foreshore, sources said.
   The water transport agency and the Narayanganj district administration conducted a four-day drive beginning January 1, following a taskforce meeting decision and more than 44 structures on the bank of the Sitalakhya were pulled down.
   Most structures were near the Kanchpur Bridge and were used for stone crushing.
   The Kassaf Trading Ltd, the biggest stone crushing firm owned by Gias Uddin, did not come under the drive as he took the land on lease for 99 years.
   Kassaf Trading occupies the riverbanks on both ends of the Kanchpur Bridge. It has filled up about 100 feet of the river under the bridge, sources in the agency said.
   Gias Uddin at the latest meeting of the taskforce said people of his area did not know the actual width of the river. It is quite normal that they use public land lying vacant for long to create employment opportunities.
   ‘I can assure you of all cooperation in saving the river. I own about 1.75 acres of land by the river and if it comes to giving up the land for the sake of the country, I will happily to do it,’ he said at the meeting.
   A BIWTA official said the Port Act 1905 clearly defines the ‘sub-soil between the high water mark and the low water mark’ of the river. The high water mark is the foreshore of the river.
   According to law, 50 yards from the foreshore into the land should remain unoccupied. A joint survey, conducted in 1960 by the agency and the Dhaka district administration, demarcated the foreshore in the area and handed it over to the agency for safeguarding, he said.
   Another official said a survey was also carried out by the Narayanganj district administration to identify illegal structures on the bank of the Sitalakhya. ‘We also have plans to carry out drive on the bank.’
   The drive to pull down illegal structures from the riverbanks of the Buriganga, Turag and Sitalakhya failed to achieve total success in the absence of permanent measures for the protection of the embankment.
   A plan is now afoot to permanently protect the embankment of the Burignanga from illegal encroachment with constructing walls and walkways along the bank.
   An estimated Tk 38-crore project, ‘construction facilities including port facilities to free the River Buriganga and its bank from illegal encroachment,’ was approved by the executive committee of the National Economic Council after more than a year, but the project could not be started as it was not included in the annual development programme of the current financial year, said another official.
   The water transport agency has reclaimed 166.42 acres of land during drives between 2000 and 2005.
   According to official statistics, 2,300 illegal structures were demolished in six years. Four hundred and forty-three structures were demolished in 2000, 289 in 2002, 576 in 2003, 504 in 2004 and 509 in 2005.

The government is negotiating with the Islamic Development Bank for a $191-million loan to use it for increasing the production capacity of the Eastern Refinery.
   The state-owned complex now refines about 14 lakh tonnes of crude oil a year.
   According to Energy Division sources, the IDB has already agreed in principle to provide the loan to carry out the balancing, modernisation, rehabilitation and expansion of the refinery. A final negotiation meeting is expected to be held next month.
   They said an IDB team was scheduled to visit Bangladesh to discuss the loan in the second week of January but it deferred the visit because of the volatile political situation in the country at that time.
   ‘We are expecting the IDB team to arrive here next month to talk about the loan,’ said a source.
   He said the BMRE work was likely to raise the annual production capacity of the refinery, a subsidiary of the Bangladesh Petroleum Corporation, to 30 lakh tonnes. The refinery came into operation in 1968.
   The energy secretary, AMM Nasir Uddin, however, told New Age on Thursday that a feasibility study would have to be carried out first to determine to what extent the production capacity of the plant should be increased.
   ‘Once the loan is finalised, we will go for the feasibility study before going for the BMRE,’ he said.
   The BPC at present imports about 37 to 38 lakh tonnes of fuel oils including 14
   lakh tonnes of crude oil and
   23 to 24 lakh tonnes of refined oils.
   If the production capacity of the refinery could be increased, the BPC would be able to reduce its import of refined oils like diesel and kerosene. The price difference between refined oils and crude oil on the international market is about $10.
   Energy officials hope the BPC will be able to reduce its annual loss to the tune of Tk 2,500 crore once the refinery’s production capacity is raised.

The army-led joint forces arrested a city ward commissioner in Sylhet and raided the houses of the members of a notorious gang in Lalmonirhat on Friday as part of the countrywide drive against crimes, corruption and hoarding.
   The forces also pulled down a number of illegal structures set up on government land in different parts of the country.
   They arrested six traders at a Rajshahi kitchen market for giving short weight.
   In Dhaka, the forces busted a place where currency were forged in a house at Dhalpur in the evening on Thursday and seized 35 pieces of forged notes of Tk 500 denomination. They arrested the owner, Selim alias Dollar Selim, at the house and seized printing materials.
   In Gazipur, the forces busted a factory where life-saving vaccines were faked in a house at Tongi and arrested its owner, Shahadat Hossain, in the evening on Friday.
   The forces seized a huge quantity of Hepatitis B vaccine named as Engerix-B, Euvax-B, Varinrix and Hiberix from the factory set up in the rented house.
   In Sylhet, an army team raided Taz Villa at Tilagar early Friday and arrested ward commissioner Azadur Rahman Azad, also general secretary of the Sylhet district Juba League, youth front of the Awami League, at a flat of the multi-storey building. He was handed over to the police in the morning.
   In Lalmonirhat, the forces raided the house of a member of the seven-star gang, formed allegedly by former deputy minister for food and disaster management Asadul Habib Dulu at Banbhasa in the Lalmonirhat town Thursday night. But the member, Sekendar Ali, also president of the Lalmonirhat sadar BNP, was not present at the time.
   In another drive, the Bangladesh Rifles men arrested two suspected fuel smugglers at the Mughalhat border.
   In Rajshahi, the forces arrested six meat and fish traders — Lal Chand, Shahjahan Ali, Arman Ali, Akkas Ali, Sajedul Islam and Ibrahim Khalil —when they were giving short measure at the Saheb Bazar kitchen market on Friday. The forces also seized 25 kilograms of fish and 90 kilograms of meat and distributed them among the poor.
   The Boalia police said the drive would continue and action would be taken against the traders giving short weight.
   In Rangpur, the forces arrested 70 in the district for their suspected involvement in crimes.
   In Chittagong, the forces arrested 12, including a union council chairman, in the city and upazilas for their suspected involvement in crimes.

Nepal’s former rebel Maoists called Friday on the United States to remove them from its list of foreign terrorist groups, accusing Washington of ignoring the country’s peace deal.
   After signing the landmark deal last November, renouncing violence after a decade of war and taking up seats in parliament, the Maoists say they are now an integral part of the new political landscape.
   ‘We are not terrorists anymore in the eyes of government,’ Maoist spokesman Krishna Bahadur Mahara said.
   ‘The US is ignoring the new political developments that have occurred in our country. We request the US to change its old policy.’
   The former rebel movement is now registering fighters and weapons with the United Nations. But the US ambassador to Nepal, James Moriarty, told journalists last week that the Maoists were likely to ‘cheat’ in the registration process and urged them to disarm completely before being allowed into government.
   ‘I think everybody here believes that the Maoists will try to cheat. They are trying to buy primitive hand-made weapons from Bihar so that they can put crummy weapons into the containers instead of their modern weapons,’ he said.
   He also said the Maoists would ‘retain their private army’ until later this year when the country is supposed to vote for a body that will redraw Nepal’s constitution.
   ‘They will use that to create the condition for an election that is not free and fair,’ Moriarty said.
   But another senior Maoist described the US position as ‘contradictory.’
   Washington also urged mainstream political parties to reconcile with King Gyanendra during his 14-month period of absolute control of Nepal.
   Meanwhile, daytime curfews were imposed on five towns in south-eastern Nepal on Friday after several deaths and dozens of injuries during violent protests in the impoverished region, local officials said.
   ‘The situation is very tense. The police have fired warning shots in the air again to disperse crowds. They are fighting to bring the situation under control,’ said local administrator Madhav Prasad Regmi from Janakpur, 375 kilometres southeast of Kathmandu.
   The violent protests began last week after a 16-year-old boy was shot dead during a scuffle between Maoists and activists from the Mahadhesi community, who are demanding increased political representation in the Himalayan nation.

A good number of underprivileged children have been cheated out of their chance to enrol in the 24 government secondary schools in the city under the 10 per cent quota for them by dishonest solvent guardians and headmasters of government primary schools.
   Sources at the government schools said some desperate guardians managed ‘cooked certificates’ from some of the city’s government primary schools stating that their children were underprivileged and had graduated the primary schooling from those schools. Those guardians used those false certificates to get their kids enrolled in Class VI at the government secondary schools under the quota.
   ‘Some children of solvent families who never studied in the government primary schools have already been selected for admission to the government secondary schools by showing false certificates under the quota for underprivileged students,’ said a teacher at a renowned government secondary school.
   An assistant teacher at a government primary school said, ‘My headmaster issued a number of Class V pass certificates to some students who never studied in our school.’
   When asked about the malpractice, Syed Hafizul Islam, headmaster of the Government Laboratory High School, said, ‘How can I detect which certificate is “cooked” and which is “genuine”? The fault lies with those dishonest headmasters of the primary schools who issued the Class V graduation certificates to those who had never been students of those schools.’
   The Directorate of Secondary and Higher Education which regulates the admission process to the government high schools in Dhaka introduced the 10 per cent quota in 2001 for the underprivileged students of the city’s 300 government primary schools at the 24 government secondary schools. To avail the quota the underprivileged students have to have graduation certificates from any of the 300 primary schools.
   The rules require that an admission-seeker under the quota has to seek admission to any government secondary school in the same thana his/her primary school is. For example, an underprivileged student graduating from a government primary school in Tejgaon or Maghbazar can apply for admission to the Tejgaon Government Boy’s High School. In case there is no government secondary school in the same thana, he/she has to apply for admission to a school in an adjacent thana.
   M Rezaul Karim, deputy director (Secondary Education) of the directorate and member-secretary of the admission committee of the city’s government secondary schools, said, ‘the main objective of the quota system is to facilitate the underprivileged children enrol in government secondary schools.’
   He said, ‘The headmasters of primary schools who issued such “false certificates” are not under my jurisdiction. So, I cannot take any action against them.’
   Rezaul, however, said, ‘I have talked to our director general, who is the head of the admission committee, about the loopholes in the quota system.’
   When asked, the DG of the directorate, Md Nazim Uddin, said, ‘I don’t know how to detect such cheatings.’
   His response to the query whether his directorate is going to amend the admission rules to prevent such cheating in the future was totally evasive: ‘I will not be holding this post next year. I am going to retire.’
   Admission to the government high schools, many of which have attached primary schools, will continue till December 27. They have about 9,000 vacant seats in various classes, mostly in Class I and Class VI.

The agriculture adviser, Chowdhury Sajjadul Karim, on Friday warned that tough legal steps would be taken against those creating artificial crisis of fertiliser by hoarding the agricultural input.
   He also directed the district administration to take legal action against the people concerned if any irregularities are detected in fertiliser management.
   Karim was addressing a meeting on fertiliser management at the local circuit house with the agriculture secretary, Abdul Aziz, in the chair.

US soldiers have been authorised to kill or capture Iranian operatives found in Iraq, the Washington Post reported Friday, citing US government and counterterrorism officials.
   The authorisation covers Iranian Revolutionary Guard and intelligence officers found in Iraq, but not Iranian civilians or diplomats, the Post reported. The newspaper describes the policy as ‘part of an aggressive new strategy to weaken Tehran’s influence across the Middle East and compel it to give up its nuclear programme.’
   For more than a year US forces have been secretly holding dozens of suspected Iranian agents for up to four days in a ‘catch and release’ policy designed to intimidate them while avoiding escalation.
   Before being released US forces collected DNA samples from some of the Iranians, took retina scans of others, and fingerprinted and photographed all of them.
   In mid-2006 top US government officials concluded they needed to be more confrontational.
   ‘There were no costs for the Iranians,’ an unnamed senior administration official told the Post. ‘They are hurting our mission in Iraq, and we were bending over backwards not to fight back.’
   The president, George W Bush, authorised the new ‘kill or capture’ programme in the fourth quarter of 2006, the Post reported.

A NATO air strike killed a senior militant in southern Afghanistan and a bomb injured three people outside the office of a US-funded aid group as the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, said the president, George W Bush, would ask Congress for $10.6 billion more in aid for Afghanistan, according to CBS and AP.
   An undisclosed number of the militant leader’s deputies were also killed in Thursday’s air strike in Musa Qala district of southern Helmand province, a NATO statement said. It did not disclose the name of the leader.
   The military alliance has claimed a string of successes against Taliban leaders — including the killing last month of a top lieutenant of the militia’s fugitive chief, Mullah Omar — after a year of bitter fighting that has left thousands dead.
   The money — intended to strengthen Afghan security forces and help rebuild after years of war — would come on top of $14.2 billion in aid the United States has already given to Afghanistan since the US-led invasion in 2001 that toppled the repressive Taliban.
   ‘The challenges of the last several months have demonstrated that we want to and we should redouble our efforts,’ Rice told reporters flying with her to Brussels for NATO meetings on Afghanistan.
   Rice said of the total, $8.6 billion would be for training and equipping Afghan police and security forces, and $2 billion would be for reconstruction.
   The money would be spent over the next two years.
   NATO foreign ministers faced pressure on Friday to increase their military and development assistance to Afghanistan after Rice announced the plans to boost US aid.
   NATO is seeking to refocus its campaign in Afghanistan to ensure military advances by its 33,460-strong force in the country are quickly followed up by development projects to help win support of the
   local population against the Taliban.
   The US aid proposal also comes as the US appears to be stepping up its military commitment in the country.