Staff Correspondent

Washington has once again become active in the country’s politics as the charge d’ affaires of the US embassy in Dhaka on Sunday held meetings with leaders of the Awami League and the pro-government faction of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party.

Geeta Pasi, accompanied by embassy officials, met Awami League leader Zillur Rahman and others and acting chairperson M Saifur Rahman of the so-called reformist faction of the BNP.

The diplomat later said she and her colleagues would meet with other political leaders over the next few weeks and discuss the same issues, especially the pending general elections in Bangladesh.

This is the first major political development involving the US mission after foreign diplomats played a critical role in the events that led up to January 11, 2007 when the state of emergency was declared and the general elections scheduled for January 22 were suspended.

The US embassy’s planned meetings began at a time when the interim government is likely to begin dialogues with political parties and when the Election Commission’s talks with political parties is facing hurdles due to the dispute within the BNP.

‘We discussed a wide range of issues, focusing on the current political situation in Bangladesh and also the status of the implementation of the electoral roadmap,’ Pasi told reporters at Zillur’s Gulshan residence.

Pasi on Sunday reiterated Washington’s ‘desire to see free, fair and fully participatory elections by the end of 2008 as promised by the caretaker government’ and underscored the importance of the political parties in this electoral process. She expressed the US’s views that dialogue between the political parties and the government was necessary to bring about an atmosphere conducive to holding the general elections.

Geeta Pasi, who has led the US embassy in Dhaka as charge d’ affaires in April 2007 when Ambassador Patricia A Butenis left Dhaka for her assignment in Baghdad, initiated her mission’s dialogue with political parties only a week after Butenis came to Bangladesh on a ‘private’ visit. Butenis, UK High Commissioner Anwar Choudhury, Canadian High Commissioner Barbara Richardson, Australian High Commissioner Douglas Foskett, European Commission’s Ambassador Stefan Frowein and, most visibly, the UN’s Resident Coordinator Renata Lok Dessalien played active roles in the political change-over.

Butenis had held a number of meetings with top politicians including BNP chairperson Khaleda Zia and Awami League president Sheikh Hasina before the state of emergency was imposed. She had also held a series of discussions with some other influential quarters in the civil and military administrations.

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