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Prime minister Sheikh Hasina, on the last day of her India visit, indicated that Dhaka and New Delhi were mulling a formal extradition treaty.
"We have signed three agreements (on combating crime). Side by side, discussions are being held on an extradition treaty," she told a news-conference in New Delhi as her four-day tour of India drew to a close.
India and Bangladesh gave a boost to bilateral security cooperation by striking three deals during Hasina's visit – Agreement on Mutual Legal Assistance on Criminal Matters, Agreement on Transfer of Sentenced Persons and Agreement on Combating International Terrorism, Organised Crime and Illicit Drug Trafficking.
Hasina said that Dhaka was ready to "go to any extent to cooperate" with New Delhi in the fight against the menace of terrorism.
Though she did not specify when the extradition treaty could be signed, foreign minister Dipu Moni later told journalists that it could be concluded shortly given the friendly relation between the two countries.
Moni said that the three agreements that India and Bangladesh signed at the end of delegation-level talks between Hasina and her Indian counterpart Manmohan Singh on Monday were enough to augment bilateral cooperation before the extradition deal could be put in place.
Hasina reiterated on Wednesday that her government was committed not to let the territory of Bangladesh to be used for terrorism or any other harmful activity against India.
Asked about the presence of insurgents of the United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA) and other rebel organisations of northeastern India in Bangladesh; Hasina said that many Bangladeshi terrorists were also living in India.
"If anybody from Bangladesh is in India, India should look into it and if anybody from India is in Bangladesh, we will look into it," she said.
She said that she and her government were committed to continue the fight against terrorism.
"Terrorists are terrorists. They have no religion, no country. Many are also giving a bad name to Islam. Islam is religion of peace," she said and stressed on the need for cooperation for peace in the region.
Hasina added that she, herself, was a victim of the menace of terrorism, having lost many of her family to it and survived attempts on her own life.
The prime minister declined to comment, however, on the possibility of Bangladesh handing over ULFA general secretary Anup Chetia to India. She said that she would not make any comment on a particular person.
Chetia was arrested in Dhaka on December 21, 1997, under the Foreigners Act and Passports Act for illegally entering into Bangladesh with foreign currencies and a satellite phone. He could not be handed over to India due to absence of any extradition treaty.
The ULFA general secretary was sentenced to imprisonment by a court, and he has now served his sentence. New Delhi is believed to have been requesting Dhaka to hand him over to India for some time.
But Bangladesh reportedly clarified that Chetia could not be handed over under the new Agreement on Transfer of Sentenced Persons, which only covered people who were still serving sentences.
The ruling Awami League general secretary and local government minister Syed Ashraful Islam, just ahead of Hsina's visit, claimed that the government had evidence of a meeting between former Pakistani president Parvez Musharraf and Chetia in Dhaka during the previous Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) regime.
Hasina on Wednesday, however, avoided a direct remark on the role of Pakistani government in the fight against terrorism in South Asia. She, however, said that since democratic governments were in place everywhere in the region, the countries could cooperate better in fight against terror.
New Delhi has long been blaming Pakistan for exporting terror to India. The bilateral relation between the two countries were strained further after 10 terrorists from Pakistan sailed into India's western metropolis and financial capital Mumbai on November 26, 2008, killed at least 174 people and injured many others.
But India-Bangladesh cooperation in security and counter-terrorism measures has emerged as a cornerstone of bilateral relationship after the Awami League-led government was voted to power after the December 2008 parliamentary elections.
Dhaka's tacit cooperation with New Delhi that resulted in the arrest of as many as seven fugitives of Indian law – 'Chairman' Arabinda Rajkhowa, 'Deputy Military Chief' Raju Barua, 'Finance Secretary' Chitraban Hazarika and 'Foreign Secretary' Sashadhar Choudhury of the proscribed United Liberation Front of Assam (ULFA), Rajkhowa's bodyguard Raja Bora and Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT) operatives Thadiyantavide Nazir and Shafaz Shamsuddin – the latter two suspected to be involved in the 2005 terrorist attacks in the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
But neither Dhaka, nor New Delhi officially recognised the role of Bangladeshi agencies in creating the situations that led to the arrests of the seven. And, as New Delhi's official versions go, all of them were arrested after India's Border Security Force (BSF) personnel spotted them near the Indo-Bangla border.
The ULFA has since 1979 been pursuing an armed rebellion with the professed objective of liberating Assam from colonial rule of New Delhi.
India had earlier alleged that several ULFA leaders, including its military wing chief Paresh Barua, were believed to be based in Dhaka and other Bangladeshi cities, although intelligence sources said that they kept on traveling to other South East Asian countries as well.
In March 2008, Mohammed Hafijur Rehman and Din Mohammed, both prime accused in the Chittagong Arms Haul case, had confessed in the court that the 10 truck-load of weapons and ammunition that was seized in 2004 had in fact been meant for the ULFA. Rehman also alleged that Barua, himself, had supervised the arms-smuggling operation.
Source: bdnews24.com
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