Dhaka accuses Delhi of triggering clash

Bangladesh accused India yesterday of triggering a border clash in which 19 soldiers died, and said it had not fired a shot except in self-defence. Foreign Secretary Syed Muazzem Ali denied that Bangladesh had reinforced its troops along the frontier since last week's flare-up and said he could not understand why India had deployed extra forces there.

"There is no build-up from our side as such on our border with India," Ali told Reuters in an interview. "What we are trying to do right now is to ensure complete peace and tranquility on the border."

Ali said the chain of incidents which led to the stand-off began on April 11, when Indian troops started building a road near Padua on the southern edge of the Indian state of Meghalaya.
He said Padua, which India calls Pyrdiwah, was recognised Bangladeshi territory where his country's freedom fighters had held a post during the war of independence from Pakistan in 1971. This post had since been held by India's Border Security Force (BSF).

When BSF troops began the road from the border back into Indian territory – breaking an agreement between the two sides – the Bangladeshi side urged them to stop. But construction continued at night, prompting the Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) border troops to surround the area from three sides in a bid to make them stop, he said.

The foreign secretary said Indian forces responded to this by entering recognised Bangladeshi territory near Roumari, across from the southwestern corner of the Indian state of Assam. "If we had a problem in Padua we had to resolve it in Padua, we can't resolve it somewhere else," Ali said.

"But if you decide to open a new front which is 210 km away from this and send troops out on a mission, if there is firing on the BDR they will obviously act in self-defence." India has said that half of the 16 troops it lost on that day had been shot at point-blank range and "brutally murdered". It has asked Dhaka for an explanation of the incident.

But Ali had his own demand for New Delhi. "Please, on your side, carry out an investigation into how companies of the BSF could enter Bangladesh territory at 5:30 in the morning." He said that with the exception of a short stretch of frontier with Myanmar, Bangladesh was almost entirely surrounded by Indian territory and it was therefore in Dhaka's interest to ensure that border problems between the two sides are resolved.