Tension high on India-Bangladesh border
Tension high on India-Bangladesh border
NEW DELHI/DHAKA (Reuters): Tension remained high on the border
between India and Bangladesh on Wednesday amid reports of a troop
build-up on both sides, raising fears that the skirmishing which
killed 19 soldiers last week could flare again.
But a foreign ministry spokesman in Dhaka denied Indian
security force allegations that Bangladesh had sent
reinforcements to the 4,000-km (2,500-mile) frontier.
He told state-run television late on Tuesday that the
situation was calm and winding down after last week's clashes,
which strained relations between the usually friendly neighbors.
Bangladeshi newspapers said India's Border Security Force
(BSF) was massing personnel along the ill-defined and winding
line which divides India's far-flung northeastern states from
Bangladesh, panicking citizens in frontier villages.
Senior Bangladeshi and Indian security officials held a "flag
meeting" on Tuesday in India's Tripura state, which juts into the
eastern side of Bangladesh.
"We have urged them to pull back their additional troops and
stop aggressive patrolling along the border," BSF Deputy
Inspector General of Tripura, Mizoram and Assam's Cachar district
told Reuters.
"The Bangladesh sector commander did not give any assurance on
reducing the strength of troops, but he agreed to cooperate in
maintaining normalcy on the border."
On Tuesday, Indian commanders protested to the Bangladeshi
side over an alleged attempt by his troops to occupy a border
outpost in Assam state's Karimgang area two days earlier.
India has said that its 16 troops who were killed in clashes
further west along the border last week were shot at point-blank
range and "brutally murdered".
The Statesman newspaper said India would insist to Bangladeshi
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina that soldiers found guilty should be
punished.
"We will wait and see the kind of action she takes, if she
punishes the guilty, and calibrate our responses accordingly," it
quoted an official in Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari
Vajpayee's office as saying.
In Dhaka, the official BSS news agency said on Tuesday Hasina
had handed cheques for 100,000 taka ($1,852) each to the families
of three Bangladeshi soldiers "who embraced martyrdom" during the
clash.
Indian commentators have linked the flare-up in tension to
forthcoming elections in Bangladesh, where Hasina is accused by
rivals of being a New Delhi stooge. They believe it may have been
engineered by the opposition to embarrass the prime minister.
A Bangladeshi opposition-led strike to force Hasina to hold an
early election entered its third and final day on Wednesday. Two
men were killed and nearly 20 injured in violence on the first
day of the strike.