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Dhaka militant deal under wraps |
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India has been offered access to Bangladesh’s territory to inspect if there are any militant camps there but Dhaka is fighting shy of putting the ground-breaking gesture down in black and white.
Official sources said Dhaka has also taken up “seriously” Delhi’s demand that ULFA general secretary Anup Chetia be deported. After serving a jail term, Chetia is said to be still in Bangladesh.
Despite Dhaka’s reluctance to make a commitment in public, the twin offers, if carried through, could set the stage for one of the biggest foreign policy breakthroughs in the sub-continent and go a long way in tackling militancy in the Northeast.
Indian officials are reportedly toiling to persuade Bangladesh to make the offer to grant access to its territory for inspections a part of a joint statement between their Home Secretaries.
According to the minutes of a meeting, Dhaka has said Indian teams can visit and verify locations suspected to be housing militant camps.
The sources said Dhaka has signalled willingness to allow physical verification in places where Delhi suspects militant camps are located as it wants to iron out the thorny issue before Prime Minister Manmohan Singh visits Bangladesh for the Saarc summit next month. The summit has already been postponed twice - once because India declined to attend citing security reasons.
Indian officials present at the talks said the atmosphere was remarkably different from that at a recent meeting between Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) and the Border Security Force (BSF).
The talks then had ended in acrimony with Bangladesh flatly denying the presence of anti-India militant camps on its soil.
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