Narinjara
News
Dhaka, April 4
Rangoon proposes a committee meeting
regarding tri-nation gas pipeline to be held in Dhaka on April 20-21
Burma has proposed that Bangladesh
hold a tri-nation committee meeting concerning the Burma-Bangladesh-India gas
pipeline in Dhaka on April 20-21, reported a Bangladesh news agency.
The meeting is intended to lead to
the signing of a deal enabling the construction of a gas pipeline that would
cross from Burma's Arakan state through Bangladeshi territory
to India’s west Bengal state of Calcutta.
The head of the Burma Energy
Planning Department put forward the proposal in a recent letter to the Chairman
of Petrobangla, the Bangladesh state-owned hydrocarbon agency.
But Bangladesh has not yet given any reply to Burma regarding the proposed committee meeting, as Bangladeshi authorities
have not reached any decision regarding this matter, Bangladesh Energy Ministry
sources said.
According to some sources in Bangladesh, Bangladesh will not be in a position to sign any agreement on the gas pipeline
until India permits Bangladesh to use its soil as a business corridor.
Bangladesh wants to use Indian territory as a business corridor in order to achieve three aims. These are to facilitate Bangladeshi export of
goods to Nepal and Bhutan, to import electricity from these nations to Bangladesh through Indian soil, and finally to reduce the huge trade imbalance
between Bangladesh and India.
The Indian Energy Minister initially
agreed to accept these three conditions proposed by Bangladesh at the first technical-committee meeting in Rangoon on 24 February. However, it is
now clear that these conditions are not being met in reality, as the Indian
Foreign Ministry appears to be against agreeing to any such conditions in the
signing of a deal on the pipeline.
Since February, a further tri-state
meeting on the pipeline has been repeatedly postponed, despite the fact that
the timeline agreed at the January 24 meeting in Rangoon scheduled a meeting to be held on March 24 2005.
Burma has now again proposed for a meeting to be held in Dhaka. However the future of the meeting remains
uncertain as Bangladesh now does not appear keen to participate.#
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