By IANS
Dhaka : It would be ‘illogical’ for Bangladesh to try to keep out India from its plans to join the Asian Highway Network (AHN), a top official who worked on the project at the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (Escap) has said.
Pointing out that India surrounds Bangladesh on three sides, Rahmatullah, who was director of the project at the UN, said economic gains from the proposed route, even with both entry and exit points in India, “are overwhelming”, The Daily Star reported Wednesday.
The AHN is a cooperative project among countries in Asia and the Escap to improve highway systems in Asia.
Bangladesh has not signed the AHN agreement, which envisages a 141,000-km network linking Bulgaria with Japan, because it says providing entry and exit points to India at the two ends of its 1,806 km portion would make the AHN an “Indian highway”.
It passed up the invitation to join the project by December 2005. Instead, the then government of Begum Khaleda Zia proposed a link with Myanmar and also an India-Bangladesh-Myanmar road link.
Bangladesh approached India, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia to change the proposed route a few months before the deadline expired.
AHN members declined to act as per Bangladesh’s proposal. Dhaka must sign the AHN pact to be able to propose any amendment to the route.
Dhaka’s proposal to follow an alternative Myanmar-Bangladesh-India route requires Bangladesh and Myanmar to jointly propose a route amendment, which is to be backed by a third AHN signatory, according to AHN rules.
But some officials in the foreign and communications ministries fear even if Myanmar agrees to the joint proposal, India may object.
The alternative Myanmar route is an “illogical proposition”, Rahmatullah said, adding that the route does not exist and given the difficulty and time required to get Myanmar on board this would be an unlikely prospect.
Instead, Rahmatullah proposed that Bangladesh should more aggressively pursue the Kunming Initiative to link Dhaka to the Chinese city of Kunming through Myanmar.
Myanmar is reportedly wary of allowing AHN to pass through its Muslim-populated territory in Arakans region where its own administration is weak.
Bangladesh has recently sought to speed up a 25-km route to link itself to Myanmar, hoping to eventually connect with Kunmin in China 680 km away. Communications Advisor M.A. Matin has said the work would be over by 2010.
Bangladesh signed the Trans Asia Railway (TAR) Network last Friday, but has held up signing the AHN Agreement “out of long-held concerns that the super-highway would act as an Indian transit corridor since both entry and exit points fall in the neighbouring country,” the newspaper said.
Dhaka joined the TAR as it goes through India-Bangladesh-Myanmar and will not serve as a corridor for India, officials say.
Dhaka is holding out hope of an alternative AHN route, which would follow a similar India-Bangladesh-Myanmar entry and exit point plan, high-level officials of the foreign and communications ministries told the newspaper.