Hasina for unity of all over Tipai plan

The prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, on Saturday urged all, including the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, to be united to protect the country’s interests over the Tipaimukh dam issue.
Hasina, also the Awami League president, made the call at a meeting of the party’s national council preparatory committee at her Dhanmondi office in the evening.
‘Tipaimukh issue is a national problem. The nation should not be divided for political reasons. We will be unable to protect our national interests if we are divided. Unity will strengthen our bargaining capacity,’ the party’s spokesperson Syed Ashraful Islam quoted Hasina to have said.
‘We will not allow anything that will cause the slightest harm to the country,’ she was quoted as saying.
‘The Indian prime minister [Manmohan Singh] assured me that they would not do anything harmful to Bangladesh and that next steps would be taken on the basis of an understanding between the two countries,’ she said.
Hasina also informed the meeting about her speech at the Non-Aligned Movement summit in the Egyptian city of Sharm el-Sheikh where she had blamed the developed world for the climate change. ‘They are responsible for the climate change and they have to compensate the nations which are in no way responsible for the calamity rather are bearing the brunt,’ she said.
Hasina said a new leadership would be elected in the AL’s council session to run the party.
A three-member election commission headed by Abdul Mannan was formed at the meeting. The two other members are advocate Rahmat Ali and Amjad Hossain.
The meeting also set the amount of contributions for holding the party council session. The presidium members will pay Tk 25,000 each and the members of the working committee Tk 10,000 each.
The meeting also decided the hold the opening and closing sessions of the council session under a large canopy in front of the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre as it would not be possible to accommodate a large number of councillors and guests in the main auditorium of the centre.

Courtesy of NewAgebd