Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has ruled out possibilities of talks with the BNP on holding a fresh, all-inclusive general election being demanded by the party.
Published : 14 Jun 2014, 09:30 PM
“They want me remanded and demands dialogue, on the other hand. With whom I’ll hold the talks? Let them decide what they want to do first,” she said on Saturday.
She was responding to BNP's Senior Vice Chairman Tarique Rahman’s recent plea that the prime minister should be questioned in remand to crack “the mystery” behind the assassination of his father, Ziaur Rahman.
The Awami League president hit back by saying that Zia’s wife, Khaleda Zia, and elder son Tarique should be taken into remand to ascertain their involvements in the assassination.
Attempts by the United Nations to bring the two leaders to the table before the elections had yielded no results.
Hasina called Khaleda once to join talks, but the latter declined because of an ongoing general strike her party had called.
Since the election, the BNP has been demanding a dialogue for early election under a non-partisan government.
Khaleda recently told a European Union delegation that she was interested in holding talks with the government.
Hasina at the press conference said, "They are talking about dialogue now. Can they give back the lives of the people they killed to foil the election?"
About the EU delegation's visit, the prime minister wondered why the team met her.
"She is not the leader of the opposition now. She has no official status," Hasina said.
She asked why the BNP had not brought its founder and Khaleda's husband Ziaur Rahman's murderers to trial in the three terms the party had been in power.
In reply to a question, she said, "Why didn't she want to see her husband's body? It was a bullet-riddled body that General Ershad had brought in."
"Her son, who talks a lot, wasn't so young either. Did he want to see the body?"
"Why did they stop the trial of this murder in '91?"