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.