NEW
DELHI, October 22 (IslamOnline) - The U.S. ambassador in Dhaka has
contradicted a Time magazine report which claimed that
Bangladesh had become a safe haven for hard-line Islamic terrorists.
The report published in last week’s issue of Time had
provoked strong criticism from the Bangladesh government.
U.S.
Ambassador Mary Ann Peters said yesterday in Dhaka that the U.S.
embassy in Dhaka follows terrorism issues closely and had no evidence
to support the allegations in the Time report.
“Nor
is the embassy aware of any basis for the story that a ship called the
M.V. Mecca dropped off a large Al-Qaeda group in Chittagong last
year,” Peters told Bangladesh’s state news agency BSS.
“Bangladesh is certainly not a hotbed of radical Islam.”
The
Time report claimed about 150 Al-Qaeda fighters were brought to
Bangladesh’s Chittagong port by a ship named “MV Mecca” in
December last year following their exodus from Afghanistan.
The
magazine claimed that the ship also carried a huge supply of arms and
ammunition from Afghanistan. Peters said the U.S. embassy was not
aware of any basis to the story.
She
said the Bangladesh government has been a staunch member of the
international coalition against terrorism.
Peters
said, while international terrorists could be found anywhere, as they
have been in the U.S. itself and in dozens of countries from Spain to
Singapore, Bangladesh was certainly not “a hotbed of radical
Islam.”
Bangladesh
government on October 20 strongly denied the Time report and
termed it as “fictitious and malicious.” Bangladesh said the story
in particular aims at disturbing Dhaka relations with New Delhi.
Bangladesh
said the story was baseless, fabricated and part of an attempt to
portray Bangladesh as a fundamentalist country.
Shamser
Mobin Chowdhury, a top official in the Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, told a news briefing last Wednesday, October16, “The
contents of this article are categorically denied by the government of
Bangladesh.”
“It
is totally fictitious and (a) figment of someone’s imagination.
There is nothing substantial in the article, which is based mostly on
unnamed sources,” Chowdhury said.
“It
is irresponsible and malicious and the people of Bangladesh will end
up suffering from this.”
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U.S.
ambassador in Dhaka Mary Ann Peters
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Bangladesh’s
biggest Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, which is part of the current
ruling alliance, said the report was a “pack of lies" aimed at
damaging the country’s image as a peace-loving Muslim state.
Since
the October 2001 election that swept Prime Minister Begum Khaleda Zia
to power, two Islamic parties, Jamaat-e-Islami and Islami Oikya Jote,
have joined the government, prompting a section of Western and Indian
media to brand the Dhaka administration as fundamentalist.
This
is the second time within a year that a leading western news magazine
has accused Bangladesh of being a hot-bed of international terrorism.
Last
April, the Far Eastern Economic Review infuriated the
government by warning its readers to “beware Bangladesh”.
On
that occasion both the government and the opposition showed a rare
display of unity to condemn the Hong Kong-based magazine, which has
been banned in the country
