Bangla minister calls on Left

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Morshed Khan came to New Delhi only to hand over an invitation for the SAARC summit which is to take place in Dhaka in January 2005.

But on the way to meeting Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Foreign Minister K Natwar Singh, he had an unexpected encounter - with the leaders of the Left parties, when he called on them at Ajoy Bhavan, the headquarters of the CPI. Khan asked for the meeting.

As special envoy of Bangladesh Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, this was his second visit to Delhi. In the formal conversation with him, New Delhi told him of its concerns about border management "" a euphemism for insurgents sliping across the India-Bangaldesh border.

But in his interraction with Left leaders he told them that there were no "permanent terrorist camps" on the border with India.

Left leaders said that Khan said these camps were set up during the nigh and dismantled by the morning, thereby making it difficult for the Bangladeshi governemnt to crack down on them.

Khan obviously had a good meeting. He began the meeting by telling the Left leaders - AB Bardhan and D Raja from the CPI and Prakash Karat from the CPI M - that he was a leftist "from my student days" and at the end of it, described it as a meeting of "brothers".

He said that there had been open discussion on several issues.Bardhan said: " We told him that it was important to dismantle the camps, whether in Bangladesh or in Maynmar."

The leader had responded, Bardhan said, by giving them details about 18 such insurgents arrested as recenltly as a week ago on the border with Tripura.

Khan's visit to Ajoy Bhavan came barely an hour after the Communist Party of India (Marxist) released a statement in the afternoon asking the Indian governemnt to take it up with Bangladesh to stop evading the "issue of sanctuary for terrorists groups any longer."

The statement which lists the resolutions passed by the CPI M central committee over the last two days says "The Bangladesh governemnt has been consistently denying the existence of the camps and the activities of the leaders from the territory of Bangladesh."

The CPIM has has a strong presence in Tripura and West Bengal, the two states affected by insurgency and infiltration from Bangladesh.