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Hasina vows to scrap

treaty with India

DHAKA: Bangladesh's Awami League, one of the country's main political parties, said it would not renew a controversial friendship treaty with neighbouring India if it wins power in elections due before the end of June.

"We will not renew the friendship treaty with India because it's needless after creation of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) and the implementation of South Asian Preferential Trade Arrangement (SAPTA)," Awami League sources quoted party chief Sheikh Hasina as telling her supporters at unscheduled political rallies late on Thursday.

Hasina, who was on her way to the capital Dhaka from her ancestral home in southern Faridpur district, also promised to create strong local governments and give temporary subsidies to agriculture.

The treaty was signed on March 19, 1972, by Bangladesh's independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and then Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

But successive governments after Rahman's assassination in a 1975 military coup called the document a "treaty of slavery".

Awami League's main rival, the Bangaldesh Nationalist Party (BNP), has already said it would not renew the treaty in what is seen as a bid to improve its poll chances and embarrass Sheikh Hasina, Rahman's daughter.

Hasina retorted that if the treaty was a problem why had it not been scrapped by Khaleda when she was in power for the last five years.

"They (BNP) are playing the India card to gain cheap popularity before elections," Hasina said.-Reuter