DHAKA: Eight Bangladeshi villagers were injured after border guards from Bangladesh and India traded gunfire over the weekend, a Bangladeshi commander said Monday.

DHAKA: Eight Bangladeshi villagers were injured after border guards from Bangladesh and India traded gunfire over the weekend, a Bangladeshi commander said Monday.
Maj. Kohinoor Alam, a border guard official of Bangladesh, said the skirmish occurred Sunday after Indian border security forces opened fire on Bangladeshi villagers along northeastern Jaintapur frontier.
He said the injured were being treated for bullet wounds, but none of them are in serious condition.
Alam said the Indian guards fired as the Bangladeshi villagers tried to prevent dozens of Indian villagers from fishing in a pond inside Bangladesh territory. Bangladeshi guards responded with fire.

Bangladesh and India share a 2,500-mile (4,000 kilometer) porous border. Clashes between the border guards of the two neighbors are common, often over villagers crossing over into each other’s territory for farming or fishing.
The latest clash occurred three days after heads of both border forces held talks in New Delhi, India and agreed to scale down violence.

DHAKA: Bangladesh will persuade China to use Chittagong port as a commercial outlet for its southern Yunnan province, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said on Sunday.

DHAKA:  Bangladesh will persuade China to use Chittagong port as a commercial outlet for its southern Yunnan province, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni said on Sunday.
The Bangladesh stance was announced nearly three months after Bangladesh had agreed to allow India, Nepal and Bhutan to use its two sea ports mainly Chittagong port.
“It will be a great achievement if China agrees to use our Chittagong port, which we want to develop into a regional commercial hub by building a deep seaport in the Bay of Bengal,” she told a news conference.
The offer for Chittagong port to Beijing will be discussed when Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visits China from Wednesday on a five-day itinerary, Moni said.
The impoverished south Asian country has taken plans to build an $8.7 billion deep-sea port in three phases to raise bulk cargo handling capacity to 100 million tonnes and container handling to 3.0 million twenty-feet equivalent unit (TEU) containers annually by 2055.
Presently the port handles 30.5 million tonnes of bulk cargo and 1.1 million TEUs annually.
Port officials said when built the port would serve Nepal, Bhutan, southern China, Myanmar and the northeastern region of India.
To use Chittagong port China will need a road or railway link or both between Kunming, the capital of southern Yunnan province with Chittagong via Myanmar, Moni said.
Myanmar last year had agreed to expand a planned road project with Bangladesh to link up with China in a tri-nation network, another foreign ministry official said.
Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a deal in July 2007 to construct a 25 km (16 mile) road to connect the two countries and construction will begin soon, officials at the Communication Ministry said.
The road project between Myanmar and Bangladesh is nearing completion, a senior foreign ministry official said on Sunday.
Chinese investment for Bangladesh’s energy and IT sectors, boosting trade and seeking assistance for building a $9 billion deep seaport and a $2.5 billion river bridge will be on top of Hasina’s agenda.
China is Bangladesh’s biggest trade partner with annual turnover worth more than $4 billion — with the balance heavily in Beijing’s favour.
After bilateral talks with her Chinese counterpart and signing of probable agreements for financial assistance, Hasina will visit Kunming on March 20.

Anti-government protesters arrived in Bangkok on Saturday to prepare for what they called a “million-man march,” aiming to paralyse the capital and topple the government which they say is a front for unelected elites.
Buses and trucks, carrying protesters, heading for Bangkok from the countryside, reached the capital’s central street of Ratchadamnoen Klang on Saturday where they set up tents and a makeshift stage ahead of the main rally on Sunday.
Protesters said the government should dissolve the Parliament and call for fresh elections.
The “red-shirts” leaders said they would stay in Bangkok for at least seven days, aiming to force Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva to call an election that Thaksin’s allies would be well placed to win.

Six security personnel among 20 persons were killed while 25 others got severely injured as two suicide bombers struck main bus stand at north Cantonment area, RA Bazaar, Lahore.
The blasts took place while the faithful were going to offer the Jumma prayers. Windowpanes of nearby building shattered in wake of the explosion. Rescue efforts are underway and the injured are being shifted to nearby hospitals.Sources added that the injured include two army majors also. Rise in toll is also feared.
Police and law enforcement agencies cordoned off the area. The President and Prime Minister condemned the incident in strong terms.

The Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki’s State of Law Coalition is widely expected to win the most seats according to preliminary results from the election. The Iraqi National Alliance opponents have also admitted Mr Maliki’s State of Law Coalition had done well, especially in Baghdad and in the Shia south of Iraq.
But it is unlikely one party will form a government alone and there may be months of negotiations on a coalition. Mr Maliki faces competition from the Shia-dominated Iraq National Alliance and the secular coalition of former Prime Minister Iyad Allawi. An official with Mr Allawi’s Iraqiya alliance said the bloc was leading in the northern and western provinces.
The final official results will not be declared until the end of March, though preliminary results are expected in two or three days. The voter turnout in Iraq’s general elections was 62%.

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Secretary of Defense Robert Gates told troops in southern Afghanistan on Tuesday they would soon be part of a “decisive phase” in the war — an operation to impose control over the Taliban heartland of Kandahar province.
NATO is sending thousands of extra troops to Kandahar over the next few months as part of plans to restore control over Kandahar, a central part of President Barack Obama’s strategy to reverse momentum in the 8-year-old war.
The operation to restore government control in Kandahar is the main military objective remaining in Obama’s strategy, which aims to turn the tide this year with 30,000 extra troops so that US forces can begin withdrawing from Afghanistan in mid-2011.

Turkey said on Tuesday it will not send its ambassador back to Washington until it gets a “clear sign” on the fate of a US resolution branding the 1915-era killings of Armenians by Turkish forces as “genocide”.
NATO member Turkey, a pivotal US ally, was infuriated and recalled its envoy after a US House panel last week approved the non-binding measure condemning the killings.
Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, speaking to reporters in Saudi Arabia off-camera, was quoted by state-news agency Anatolian as saying the ambassador will not be going back until there is a “clear sign” on the outcome of the situation regarding the Armenian bill. He did not elaborate.
Erdogan, on an official visit where he met Saudi leaders in Riyadh, has said the resolution will damage US-Turkish ties, although the Obama administration has vowed to stop it from going further in Congress.
Turkey, a secular Muslim democracy that has applied for membership of the European Union, is crucial to US interests in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and the Middle East.
The issue of the Armenian massacres is deeply sensitive in Turkey. Turkey accepts that many Christian Armenians were killed by Ottoman Turks but vehemently denies that up to 1.5 million died and that it amounted to genocide — a term employed by many Western historians and some foreign parliaments.

A traditional Islamic concept about protecting the faith and its followers has become a judicial weapon for Iran’s rulers: charging opponents as so-called enemies of God with the threat of possible death sentences.
Iran’s accusations of “moharebeh”, literally “waging war” in Arabic, have opened deep rifts between ruling clerics and Islamic scholars questioning how an idea about safeguarding Muslims can be transformed into a tool to punish political protesters. The outcry increased last week after an appeals court reportedly upheld the death sentence for Mohammad Amin Valian, a 20-year-old student convicted of moharebeh crimes, which Iran’s legal code defines as “defiance of God”, or the state and punishable by hanging. Valian’s case has become a new rallying point for the opposition as authorities try to further rattle protesters after crushing demonstrations last month. Valian has only admitted to throwing stones at security forces during anti-government protests in December, according to opposition Web sites. On Sunday, Tehran prosecutor Abbas Jafari Dowlatabadi said the student still can appeal. The case also highlights the huge perception gap in Iran. Opposition groups have declared Iran’s leadership politically bankrupt after alleged vote-rigging and violence. But hard-line supporters of the Islamic system consider it answerable only to God. Valian is among a dozen people convicted of moharebeh offenses, said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the New York-based International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran. Hundreds more are in detention and have yet to face the courts, which are directly controlled by the ruling theocracy.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai is arriving in Pakistan today on a two-day visit.
During his stay, Karzai would meet with President Zardari and Prime Minister Gilani. According to diplomatic sources, Pakistan would discuss India’s interference in Balochistan and security of Pakistanis present in Afghanistan with Karzai, while the latter would likely to raise regional strategy, and issues of 2 million Afghan refugees residing in Pakistan.
Sources added that the Afghan President would also seek shifting of arrested Taliban leader Baradar. It would be Karzai’s first visit to Pakistan after being elected President for the second term.