Thursday, June 29 2006 13:01 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

Dhaka: Bangladesh has once again charged India with inviting oil and gas exploration tenders in un-demarcated areas of the Bay of Bengal, media reports said.

Prime Minister Khaleda Zia told the Jatiya Sangsad (parliament) that Dhaka had lodged a strong protest with New Delhi on this and that she had personally spoken to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during their meeting in March.

"Dhaka feels that these issues should be resolved through discussion," Zia said while replying to a question from treasury bench member S.A. Sultan, the official Bangladesh Sangbad Sanstha news agency reported.

Zia stressed that the two countries should immediately resolve the issues that had not yet been settled.



She however said that cooperation in the fields of trade and commerce, education, culture and other sectors had increased between the two countries.

The Bangladesh Observer quoted Zia as saying that her government had held discussions with India, especially on the process to demarcate the land border, creating peaceful atmosphere along the border areas, stop killing of innocent Bangladesh nationals in the border and stopping the push-in of Bengali-speaking Indians to Bangladesh"



She said efforts were on to reduce the existing huge trade imbalance between the two countries.

"The Indian government was informed of Bangladesh's grave concern about the proposed river-linking (of the Ganges and Brahmaputra rivers) through a diplomatic note and the matter was raised at the India-Bangladesh joint river commission meeting," she said.

Her discussions with Manmohan Singh during the India visit were 'very fruitful', she said.

"I have informed the Indian premier of matters related to Bangladesh's interests and sought his sincere cooperation," she said.

Zia claimed that a favourable atmosphere was created after her visit to India for holding discussions on various bilateral issues between the two countries. She expressed her belief that the two countries would utilise this favourable atmosphere to further strengthen friendly relations between them.