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An alleged rise in Islamic militancy, and law and order downslide dominated the first day of discussions in Washington on Wednesday as lending agencies and nations sat at an `informal meeting' to discuss how they can more effectively help Bangladesh ride out the current bout of governance problems and political confrontation.
Sources at the World Bank, which is hosting the two-day meeting at the Watergate Hotel, said Dhaka-based European diplomats, especially representatives from Germany and Denmark, were most vocal in raising their concerns about the emergence of Islamists and human rights abuse at the onset of the meeting.
Representatives of the European Union, the US State Department, the United Nations, the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank reviewed Bangladesh's development roadmap in the three sessions that were held on the first day of the meeting.
The US assistant secretary of state for South Asia, Christina Rocca, the World Bank vice president, Praful C Patel, and EU executive Julian Williams chaired the three sessions.
`This is basically an internal meeting of the development partners. They have taken the opportunity to brainstorm among themselves on governance and other issues that affect the development process,' a source in Washington told New Age.
The representatives of bilateral and multilateral development partners have primarily decided to register their common concerns with the government and seek more engagement in mitigating those in more effective and constructive ways, he said.
Questions, however, have been raised as no representatives from the government were invited to be present, let alone to put forward the government's own assessments and perspectives.
The Washington source said since it was a preparatory meeting, the organisers did not deem it necessary to have official representation from Bangladesh at this stage. `The final meeting will certainly be with the government,' he said.
Other sources close to the meeting, however, told New Age that the nature of the discussion on Wednesday suggested that the objective as far as the European Union countries - that had originally requested the meeting - were concerned, was to crosscheck the information the government had provided to Dhaka-based representatives of lender organisations and nations.
European lenders, who had hosted the finance and planning minister, M Saifur Rahman, at a series of meetings last week, took every opportunity during the day's proceedings to verify information provided by him with Dhaka-based representatives.
Saifur, on his return from Europe on February 21, expressed his displeasure over the European Union's insistence on holding the Washington meeting.
He contended that any development meeting on Bangladesh should be held at home and with participation of the government.
The government earlier decided not to host the Bangladesh Development Forum in Dhaka this year. The annual pre-budget parley with lenders, formerly known as the Paris Consortium, had been shifted to Dhaka in the last few years from the French capital.
Although no one from the government is attending the Washington meet, economist Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman, the principal author of the World Bank/IMF-prescribed Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper, presented a country paper on Bangladesh at the dinner session on Wednesday.
The World Bank executive director
for Bangladesh, Akbar Ali Khan, has been asked to attend the closing
session today.
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