Bangladesh News

The pro-Khaleda faction of BNP yesterday decided to join the pre-dialogue talks, to be held any time today, with advisers of the government.

A text message from Education and Commerce Adviser Hossain Zillur Rahman was sent yesterday to Khandaker Delwar Hossain, BNP secretary general appointed by Chairperson Khaleda Zia, inviting the faction to join the discussions at 5:00pm the same day, but the schedule was deferred till today by request of the faction.

Following the invitation, leaders of the faction called an emergency meeting at Delwar’s Nam flat to discuss the matter.

Emerging from the meeting at around 8:30pm, Delwar told reporters that they had received positive signal from the party chief about joining the discussions with the government.

“We received some [positive] directives from our chairperson and our senior leaders are now discussing the matter,” he said hoping that the outcome of their discussions would be positive.

Among others, BNP standing committee member Dr RA Gani, chairperson’s adviser Brig Gen (retd) Hannan Shah, vice presidents MK Anwar and Sarwari Rahman, joint secretaries general Nazrul Islam Khan, Goyeshwar Chandra Roy, Selima Rahman and MA Mannan attended the meeting that started at 6:30pm.

Delwar said he had spoken with several advisers over the phone during their meeting and told them that they did not have any objection in joining them in the proposed dialogue since BNP is a pro-election party.

On April 07, the commerce adviser made a phone call to pro-Khaleda leader Rizvi Ahmed and invited the faction for talks with the government. However, on April 08, the pro-Khaleda leaders told the adviser that Delwar needed to get the party chairperson’s consent before joining any dialogue with the government.