DHAKA (PTI): Leaders of a fundamentalist group here April 4 repeated their threat to lay siege on Dhaka airport to prevent Indian premier P.V Narasimha Rao from attending the seventh South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) summit to be held here on April 1011.
The chairman of the “Babri Masjid Sangram committee,” Maulana Azizul Hug, told reporters they would lay siege when Rao arrives in Dhaka from Bangkok on April 10 and there was no question of calling offthe program even if it meant postponement of the summit.
Hug said the Bangla government had not yet approached them to call off the siege. “Neither the home minister (Abdul Matin Chowdhury) nor any body close from the government has talked to us about the issue,” he added.
The committee, which has been demanding that Rao lays the foundation of Babri Mosque in Ayodhya before attending the seventh SAARC summit, also announced that it would organize a public rally in Dhaka on April 9 to press for the demand.
It also included the demand for “the rightful share” of Bangladesh in the water now of the Ganges and other common rivers between the countries.
Azizul Hug, reading out from a prepared statement, said his committee wished success to the SAARC summit.
However, newsmen said his wish was contradictory to the agitation against Rao as the summit would not be held in the abs rice of the Indian prime minister as per the SAARC charter.
To this Huq said the question of rivers water sharing and reconstruction of Babri mosque were life-and-death questions for Bangladesh and “our survival takes precedence over everything else.”
Political observers here attach significance to the addition of the rivers water sharing issue to the Babri masjid Sangram committee’s movement as it had already generated anti India campaign among a section of the people.
This was due to the two weeks of sustained and orchestrated media blitz, before the March 3031 Indo Bangla expert level talks and after.
Article extracted from this publication >> April 9, 1993
