Political rivalry dismissed

Bangladeshi Ambassador Hasan Ahmad brushed off criticisms of the mercurial politics between Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and opposition leader Sheikh Hasina Wazed and insisted that the country was progressing politically and economically.

There have been regular reports of personal animosity between the two women spilling into street protests. But Mr. Ahmad said the struggle between the nation’s leading politicians was only normal, bipartisan rivalry.

Sheikh Hasina, who leads the Awami League party, was injured Aug. 21 when an explosion shook her opposition rally, killing 20 of her supporters and a bodyguard.

Mr. Ahmad denied that the ruling Bangladesh Nationalist Party had anything to do with the bombing and said the government was doing all it could to track down the perpetrators of the attack.

“To us, there is nothing personal in this thing. We have a developed bipartisan political system, [and] as in any bipartisan system there will be a power struggle between these two parties.”

According to the latest State Department human-rights report, police in Bangladesh often have used “excessive, sometimes lethal, force in dealing with opposition demonstrators.”

Nearly all abuses have gone unpunished, and in February, the parliament adopted legislation protecting security forces from legal consequences for their actions, the report said.

“Violence, often resulting in deaths, was a pervasive element in the country’s politics,” the State Department wrote in its report, released in February.

Mr. Ahmad refuted claims that the political rivalry was dangerously dividing the country, but said that the tendency of people to take their resentment to the street was damaging the fledgling economy.

Politically driven strikes, he acknowledged, meant that Bangladesh’s “exports are affected [and] industry is affected.”

A State Department official said the country’s biggest problems were rooted in both corruption and in the political culture, whereby opposition parties preferred to take to the streets rather than deal with issues within parliament.

“It interferes with normal business, and deters foreign investment,” the official said. “The issues of corruption are of more concern and are really holding Bangladesh back.”

The United States, the fourth-largest aid donor to Bangladesh after Japan, Saudi Arabia and the European Community, is keen on seeing the moderate Muslim-majority country of 141 million people succeed.

Mr. Ahmad said that relations with neighboring India were good, despite tensions between the two countries over cross-border incursions by autonomy-seeking rebels in the remote northeastern region of India.