Quader urges BNP to sever Jamaat ties
Urging the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) to first clearly decide whether or not it would cut off ties with the Jamaat-e-Islami, road, transport and bridges minister Obaidul Quader yesterday said it was only then that it should talk about curbing militancy in the country.
The BNP will have to clearly spell out to the nation that it is against extremism, not against the AL-led government. And if it is against extremism, it should first dissociate itself from the Jamaat, he said while talking to reporters after visiting a site to oversee the construction of the four-lane Dhaka-Chittagong highway in Comilla.
The minister alleged that BNP leaders had just been paying lip service to building a greater unity to curb terrorism and militancy in the country. Had the BNP really wanted to root out militancy from the country, it would already have cleaved its links with the Jamaat, he said. But it has so far refused to do so, which proved that the party was still extending patronage to extremism in the country, he observed.
The BNP would have to realise that it was impossible to root out extremism while being hand-in-glove with extremists, he added. Many BNP leaders might have already suggested to their partys chairperson, Khaleda Zia, that she should cut off ties with her alliance partner, Jamaat-e-Islami, for the welfare of the people and the country, the senior AL leader said.
Meanwhile, at a separate programme in Lakshmipur, shipping minister Shajahan Khan yesterday said there could be no national unity with the BNP as long as it refused to cut off ties with Jamaat. The Jamaat-e-Islami was a platform of extremists that had killed three million people during the countrys Liberation War in 1971, he observed.
At the same time, he also called upon people from all walks of life to remain vigilant, so that no one could carry out militant activities in the country anymore. There would be no room for militants in the country, he iterated.
