BNP urges Speaker to initiate talks with opposition parties

"We sincerely want to take decision on all vital issues collectively. So, we have taken the initiative by requesting the Speaker to hold dialogue first with the main opposition Awami League (AL) on issues ranging from parliamentary stand-off to hartal," said BNP Secretary General Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan yesterday.

Addressing a press corps at a city hotel, he said the government also plans to call all political parties to settle the issues that upset development endeavours and constructive politics.

Bhuiyan said his government wants to strike an understanding with the opposition parties to run Jatiya Sangsad affairs as per the rules of procedure and make parliament centre-point of all activities.

"It will be easy to reach a broad-based national consensus on vital issues if we can develop an understanding first in parliament," said Bhuiyan, urging the AL to respond to the Speaker's letter and join parliament.

Quoting Prime Minister Khaleda Zia's recent statement, Bhuiyan, also the LGRD and cooperatives minister, said the BNP sincerely wants to make politics people- oriented, productive, qualitative and free of criminals and black money.

The BNP leader said the prime minister had already come forward to build a national consensus by honouring Sheikh Mujibur Rahman with the Independence Award and with the proposal for hanging the portrait of national leaders in government offices. The proposal is still valid and the BNP is waiting for a response from the opposition parties, he said.

Regretting Opposition Leader Sheikh Hasina's stinging criticism of the PM's recent call for political reforms, he said, "Let's build a healthy political atmosphere together...Many of our neighbouring countries moved ahead of us by reforming politics."

Bhuiyan said the AL had vowed not to call hartal when it was in power, but it forgot that promise fast finding itself in the opposition.

He urged all parties to join his party's roadmap for national development by responding positively to the prime minister's call for political reforms.