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| Sunday, 24 March 2002 |
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Bangladesh
and India begin border talks
DHAKA, Saturday (Reuters) Bangladesh and Indian border security chiefs began talks for resolving disputes on their border which often result in the exchange of fire and deaths, officials said. "The three-day meeting will try to remove existing irritants between the two friendly neighbours," Colonel Ahmedullah Imam, of Bangladesh Rifles (BDR), paramilitary border force, told Reuters. Gurbachan Jagat, Director General of Indian Border Security Force (BSF), arrived in Dhaka on Friday for talks with his BDR counterpart Rezaqul Haider. The meeting came after the two countries' border forces exchanged heavy fire this month over a disputed tea garden on their 4,000-km (2,500-km) frontier. Neither side suffered any casualties in that clash. Indian forces accused Bangladeshi forces of uprooting tea bushes and planting their flag on India's Fakir Rani tea plantation, some 500 km (310 km) north of Calcutta in India's West Bengal state. Dhaka said the firefight started after their troops tried to stop Indians from planting tea bushes in the plantation, which Bangladesh said had been extended into the border zone in contravention of a 1975 treaty. In April last year, ties between the normally friendly neighbours were strained when 16 Indian troops and three Bangladeshi soldiers were killed in a border clash. "We will raise at least 10 pertinent issues including killing of innocent Bangladeshi nationals by BSF, the tea plantation along the border line, construction of dams by Indians in common rivers, and trafficking of women and children," Haider told reporters. India will table at least eight issues including trans-border crimes, the alleged flow of Bangladeshis into India, and Indian insurgents' activities in Bangladesh, another BDR official said. Indian BSF forces shot dead 70 Bangladeshis for an alleged illegal crossing into Indian territory after April last year, BDR statistics said. |
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