Staff Reporter :
The new US ambassador in Dhaka was shocked at the way people are being killed in political violence in Bangladesh during the ongoing blockades.
“It’s absolutely painful,” Marcia Stephens Bloom Bernicat bemoaned on Monday while meeting the State Minister for foreign affairs Md Shahriar Alam at the foreign ministry, sources close to the meeting told The New Nation.
Shahriar Alam in that meeting reiterated its request to the United States to conclude the much-discussed bilateral extradition treaty.
Alam also raised the issue of repatriation of Rashed Chowdhury, a self-confessed killer of the Father of the Nation Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and Ashrafuzzaman Khan, a convicted war criminal for crimes against humanity during the 1971 Liberation War.
After an hour-long meeting, Bernicat told reporters that US’ relations with Bangladesh are so broad and there are lots of things to talk about. “We had a very useful conversation,” she said in her brief remarks. The US envoy, however, did not take any question, and hoped that she would meet the media soon. Bernicat landed in Dhaka on Jan 25 amid a turbulent political situation.
She said the US deplored bus bombings, train derailments in a statement and said there is “simply no justification” for such actions in a democratic Bangladesh.
At least 60 people have been killed in the violence so far, most burnt to death in fire-bombings.
Bernicat said at Monday’s meeting: “This (current violence) is not the way”. She said political demonstrations can be organised in a restrained manner to highlight a grievance.
BNP and its allies are enforcing a countrywide transport blockade to force the government hold a snap poll.
The party did not join the 10th parliamentary elections last year on Jan 5, citing no confidence in a poll under the Hasina government.
The US also found that elections “not credible” and Bernicat during her Congressional hearing to confirm her assignment termed the polling “undeniably flawed”.
But after presenting credentials she said she looked forward to work with “everyone in the government” and that she was directly mandated to make the US-Bangladesh relation even stronger.
During her meeting with state minister Alam, she also reiterated that the relations would be stronger in the future. She said she was amazed at Bangladesh’s socio-economic development.
