The New Nation - Internet Edition

Ensure best use of IT for country’s interest: President

President Prof Dr Iajuddin Ahmed addressing the 8th
Convocation of American International University, Bangladesh
at Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre in the city
on Monday. PID photo

BSS, Dhaka

President Professor Dr Iajuddin Ahmed on Monday called upon all concerned to provide the cutting edge of information technology and ensure best use of it for the greater interest of the country.

"The unforeseen development of IT sector gives us enormous opportunity to gather knowledge on one hand and throws us some challenges on the other. In this backdrop, the updated IT knowledge is a must for all in order to pick up the advantage of IT," he added.

The President said this while addressing the 8th convocation of American International University, Bangladesh (AIUB) at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar here on Monday morning.

Vice chancellor of AIUB Dr Carmen Z. Lamagna, chairman of University Grants Commission (UGC) Professor Nazrul Islam and founder chairman of the board of trustee of AIUB Dr Anwarul Abedin sopke on the occasion.

Ambassador of Japan to Bangladesh Masayuki Inoue also addressed as the convocation speaker.

Military Secretary to the President Major General Mohd Aminul Karim, Secretary Md Sirajul Islam and Press Secretary Abdul Awal Howlader were present.

Prof Iajuddin said universities, as the center of excellence, play a pivotal role in creating human resources to face the growing challenges of IT.

"I have observed that the revolution of information technology as well as the emergence of market economy has challenged us to a great extent. However, the competitive nature of the global economy and the digital divide can be responded by harnessing skilled human resources," he added.

Referring to the various achievements of Bangladesh in macro- economy, health and nutrition, reducing child mortality rate, enhancing literacy rate and immunization programme, he said, it is heartening to see that Bangladesh is slowly emerging as a middle- income nation shaking off its earlier stigma of least developed country.

The President, however, said despite attaining these successes, the country has to go a long way for achieving the desired goals of our hard-earned independence.

Professor Iajuddin said the intrinsic value of education is to illuminate oneself and to enlighten the society with the ever- ending light of wisdom and prudence.

"We want to build a knowledge-based society, where knowledge would be the main driving force for attaining the overall development," he added.

He hoped the erudite section of the society as well as the educational institutions, particularly the universities would come forward to foster the heritage and to nurture the innate intellect of the people in order to create knowledge-based society.

BCL demands release of its detained general secretary

Chhatra League activists brought out a procession
at Dhaka University campus yesterday demanding immediate
release of detained General Secretary of the organisation
Mahfuzul Haider Roton. FocusBangla

UNB, Dhaka

Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL), the student wing of Awami League, yesterday demanded immediate release of its detained general secretary Mahfuzul Haider Chowdhury Ruton.

Joint forces arrested Ruton on January 15 last year while he along with five party colleagues were coming home at night.

To press for their demand, BCL brought out a silent procession on the Dhaka University campus in the morning. Later, they held a rally in front of Arts Building.

BCL DU unit president Sohel Rana Tipu and general secretary Sajjad Sakib Badshah, among others, addressed the rally.

Trial of war criminals: Sector commanders to elicit public opinion on the issue

Sector Commanders Forum organised a view exchanging
meeting with journalists at its office in the city yesterday
as it will organise the national convention at
Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre on March 15.
FocusBangla

Staff Reporter

Sector Commanders Forum will elicit huge public consent for the trial of the war criminals to create pressure on the government regarding the issue.

Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Liberation Army Air Vice Marshal (Retd) AK Khandoker said this yesterday after a meeting with senior journalists in the city.

The SCF will also hold a Freedom Fighters' Convention on March 15 at the Bangladesh China Friendship Conference Centre.

"After the convention we will travel to districts and upazilas to tell people what we want and why the trial is important," said the war hero.

He said, "We will continue the process until government responds to our demand."

"This government can start the process now," said AK Khandoker. He was upset over the government's silence on the issue though they had written to the Chief Adviser demanding the trial of the war criminals.

AK Khandoker said they would seek help from the political parties in creating public consent and would oppose the parties which would ally with the war criminals.

Sector Commander Maj Gen (Retd) CR Dutta and former Army Chief Lt Gen (Retd) Harun-ur Rashid Bir Protik, among others, were present.

Biman to procure 8 new aircraft

BSS, Dhaka

Biman Bangladesh Airlines Ltd. will procure eight new generation aircraft with US$ 1.265 billion to make the national flag carrier a viable and profitable organisation.

Special Assistant to the Chief Adviser in charge of the Ministries of Civil Aviation and Tourism, Youth and Sports and Industries Mahbub Jamil stated this at a press conference in the conference room of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism here on Monday.

Secretary of the Ministry of Civil Aviation and Tourism Syed Mohammad Jubaier and Managing Director of Biman Dr Abdul Momen were present.

Mahbub Jamil said Exim Bank-USA and a consortium of local banks will provide the fund to procure the aircraft, which is the first venture of Biman to buy any aircraft without public money.

He said the Exim Bank will provide 85 per cent of the total fund at six-percent interest rate and the rest of 15-percent money will be available from the local consortium.

The special assistant said Bangladesh Biman would sign a memorandum of understanding with the Boeing manufacturer and supplying company on March 15 next. The final agreement in this regard will be signed on April 15, he said.

Obama leads in Mississippi, Hillary in Pennsylvania

Bloomberg.com

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama leads Hillary Clinton among the party's likely voters in Mississippi while Clinton is ahead in Pennsylvania, new polls showed.

Obama, an Illinois senator, is backed by 53 percent of Mississippi Democrats compared with 39 percent for Clinton, a New York senator, according to a Rasmussen Reports poll. A separate American Research Group Inc. poll showed 58 percent of Mississippi voters back Obama compared with 34 percent for Clinton.

In Pennsylvania, 52 percent of Pennsylvania voters now support Clinton compared with 37 percent for Obama, a Rasmussen poll found. American Research had Clinton with 52 percent and Obama with 41 percent in Pennsylvania. Obama beat Clinton in yesterday's Wyoming caucuses. Tension between the two rivals increased after Clinton won March 4 primaries in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. The next Democratic votes will be in Mississippi March 11, followed by Pennsylvania on April 22.

Rasmussen Reports surveyed 816 likely Democratic primary voters in Mississippi and 690 in Pennsylvania. The separate telephone polls were conducted March 5 and each has a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

The American Research telephone surveys were conducted March 5-6 in Mississippi and March 7-8 in Pennsylvania. Both included 600 of each state's likely Democratic voters and have a margin of error of plus or minus 4 percentage points.

From the Foreign Press: Iraq will not be a Qaedistan

Olivier Roy

One of the key questions in the U.S. presidential race is what will happen if U.S. troops leave Iraq.

Of course nobody knows for sure. But I can say this: Al Qaeda will not take power and establish an Islamic state.

Too many in the West persist in seeing Al Qaeda as a territorialised Middle East organisation bent on expelling the Christians and Jews from the region in order to create a "Dar al-Islam" (land of Islam) under the umbrella of a caliphate.

Al Qaeda is not a continuation of the Muslim Brotherhood, Hamas or Hezbollah. It is a non-territorial global entity which has never tried to implement an Islamic state, even in Afghanistan, where it found sanctuary in the 1990s.

It is pointless thinking of Al Qaeda as a political organisation seeking to conquer and rule a territory. Al Qaeda recruits among disenfranchised youth, most of them without direct connections with the embattled countries of the Middle East.

Second-generation Western Muslims, converts, Saudis, Egyptians and Moroccans make up the bulk of the Al Qaeda traveling jihadists - not Afghans, Palestinians or Iraqis. Al Qaeda does not have the necessary local rooting for taking power.

Al Qaeda's strategy is first to confront the big boys - or rather the big boy, the United States - directly, relying not on the actual damage inflicted (financial cost, number of dead) but on image, media impact and the terror effect.

The mirror effect of those who claim a clash of civilisations, of course, intensifies the impact. In fact, Al Qaeda needs those who demonise it, because it makes it what it is not: the vanguard of the "Muslim wrath."

Al Qaeda goes where the Americans are while the U.S. Army goes where Washington thinks Qaeda might be . . . one day.

Secondly, Al Qaeda seeks to hijack existing conflicts and make them part of the global jihad against the West.

However, in Bosnia, Chechnya, Afghanistan and now Iraq, the Islamist internationalist groups have been unsuccessful in diverting local and national conflicts, playing only the role of auxiliaries. The key actors of the local conflicts are the local actors: the Taliban in Afghanistan, the different Sunni and Shiite groups in Iraq, Hezbollah in Lebanon. These groups are not under the leadership of Al Qaeda.

Al Qaeda has managed only to implant foreign volunteers into these struggles, volunteers who usually do not understand local politics and find support among the local population only as long as they fight a common enemy, such as American troops in Iraq.

But their respective agenda is totally different: Local actors, Islamist or not, want a political solution on their own terms. They do not want chaos or global jihad. As soon as there is a discrepancy between "the policy of the worst" waged by Al Qaeda and a possible local political settlement, the local actors choose the local settlement.

The Bosnians got rid of the radical foreign fighters once they achieved their independence; the Taliban rank-and-file refused to die for Al Qaeda when the Western forces landed in Afghanistan after 9/11.

In Iraq, many among the Sunnis, including the Salafists, resent not only Al Qaeda's tactics of indiscriminate suicide bombings, but also the strategy of confronting the Shiites.

The fact is Al Qaeda plays a role in the deterioration of the conflicts but is unable to succeed in coordinating them. Local, national, tribal or sectarian religious channels are stronger.

Al Qaeda may recruit some local organisations, acting within a limited area or linguistic region, with their own history. These groups then claim affiliation with Al Qaeda. They are to be found in Indonesia (Jemah Islamiyya); in the northern Sahel (the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, which in January 2007 changed its name to the Al Qaeda Organisation in the Islamic Maghreb); Northern Lebanon (third-generation but still uprooted Palestinian refugees); in the Sunni triangle of Iraq (with the late Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's group); and in Saudi Arabia and Yemen ("Al-Qaeda Organisation in the Arabic Peninsula").

But these organisations do not need Al Qaeda in order to recruit or operate. If they have rallied to it, it is because they have difficulty in defining or achieving a local objective (an Islamic state, for example). They become globalised therefore by default.

In short, there may be good reasons for the United States to remain in Iraq, but they have nothing to do with Al Qaeda; they have more to do with a damage-control operation. If the U.S. troops leave, there might be a civil war, there might be a growing Iranian influence, Iraq might be turned into a battlefield by proxies between Saudi Arabia and Iran. There could be a Sunni-controlled area, a Shiite state and an independent Kurdistan, but no Qaedistan.

It would have been better to concentrate the Western forces on Afghanistan, which has been the real cradle of Al Qaeda. If only part of the brains and armour devoted to the "surge" in Iraq had been devoted to Afghanistan, instead of the incessant turnover of disparaged NATO troops with little knowledge of the country, things would have been better.

But in Afghanistan, as anywhere else in the greater Middle East, there is no military solution, only a political solution by dealing with the local actors, and dropping the senseless idea of a "global war on terror."

50MW Power plant in CEPZ : Bangladeshi co to invest $45m

Staff Report

A Bangladeshi company, M/s Agrani Complex (Pvt) Ltd is going to set up a 50MW Power Plant in Comilla Export Processing Zone (CEPZ) in order to solve the power crisis in the EPZ area and its surroundings.

This power plant will be established investing $ 45million, which will provide uninterrupted power supply to the operating enterprises of CEPZ and its adjacent areas during peak and off-peak hours.

The company will install the 50MW plant on 43,233sq. meter of allotted land within the EPZ. This plant will start providing the service within 24 month, said an official from the Agrani Complex.

Initially this power plant will meet the existing requirement of CEPZ and its future needs.

After fulfilment of EPZ requirement, they may sell their excess power to PDB/REB or other organizations at their own arrangement.

Thirty five Bangladeshis and one foreign national will get employment opportunity in this company, official informed.

An agreement to this effect was signed between the Bangladesh Export Processing Zone Authority (BEPZA) and M/s Agrani Stell Complex (Pvt) Ltd in BEPZA Complex here on last Sunday.

BEPZA Manager (Investment Promotion) AZM Azizur Rahman and Managing Director of M/s Agrani Stell Complex (Pvt) Ltd Md Zaynal Abedin signed the lease agreement on behalf of their respective organisations.

Plan to stabilise prices soon

BSS, Dhaka

Commerce and Education Adviser Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman on Monday said the government would come out with a comprehensive plan within one or two days for keeping stable the prices of essentials.

"We are trying hard to keep the market stable and for that monitoring mechanism will be further strengthened soon," he told the journalists after inaugurating the South Asian Sociology Conference here as the chief guest.

The adviser said they would again sit with the businessmen and other stakeholders with the comprehensive plan for controlling the prices of essentials.

"We will do whatever needed, if required punishment will be given to those who were responsible for the price hike," he said South Asian Sociological Society (SASS) and Independent University, Bangla-desh (IUB) jointly organized the two-day conference at the Spectra Convention Center at Gulshan.

Vice Chancellor of IUB Professor Bazlul Mobin Chowdhury chaired the inaugural session of the conference where former president of Indian Sociological Society Professor Partha Nath Mukherjee presented the keynote paper.

President of Indian Sociological Society Professor Uttamrao Bhoite, President of Pakistan Sociological Association Professor Fateh Mohammad Burfat, K Tudor Silva of Peradeniya University of Sri Lanka, convener of SAS Professor Nazul Islam and organising secretary of the conference committee Dr SM Shamsul Alam spoke on the occasion.

Empowering women to check repression stressed

BSS, Dhaka

Speakers at a seminar here on Monday stressed the need for empowerment of women for checking all kinds of repression against them.

"Though males and females are equal in the eye of law, the women are being deprived of having a due share in the participation of the government's development endeavours," they said. The seminar on 'South Asian's Women: Bangladesh Perspective' was held at the auditorium of the Bangladesh Economic Association (BEA).

Bangladesh Unnayan Parishad (BUP) and Development of Alternative for Rural Poor (DORP) in cooperation with Image a New South Asia (INSA) jointly organised the seminar marking the International Women Day-2008.

Former adviser to the caretaker government Advocate Sultana Kamal chaired the seminar while INSA regional steering committee chairmen and eminent economist Dr Kazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmed was present as the chief guest.

DORP Secretary General AHM Noman, BUP Executive Director Dr Jadop Chandra Saha, were present, among others. Professor of the department of history of Dhaka University Dr Jaheda Ahmed and AHM Noman presented the keynote papers in the seminar on 'Empowerment of Women in South Asian' and 'Maternity Allowance for Poor Mother' respectively.

Reports on ex-DG of NSI denied

BSS, Dhaka

The National Security Intelligence (NSI) Department yesterday protested press reports that Major General M Tajul Islam had been withdrawn from the post of its Director General, describing those as "totally incorrect".

It said the matter was presented in a section of national dailies in a distorted manner undermining the former director general of the NSI and his career, according to a PID handout.

Clarifying the matter, the NSI Department said Major General M Tajul Islam, NDC, PSC, went on leave preparatory to retirement (LPR) yesterday under the usual procedure.

It said the government, as per rules, had placed his service under the Armed Forces on March 6 to complete the necessary formalities for him to go on LPR as an army officer.

Accordingly, it said, he was formally given farewell from the NSI Department on that day.

Tibet exiles begin protest march

Tibetan Buddhist monks carry flags and a portrait of
The Dalai Lama as they march in Dharamsala on
Monday.

BBC News

More than 100 Tibetan exiles have begun a march from India to Tibet to protest against Chinese rule in the region.

The marchers left Dharamsala on the 49th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's escape from Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule.

The Dalai Lama, Tibet's spiritual leader, has called for greater pressure on China over its human rights record. In Nepal, at 1,000 Tibetan exiles have clashed with police in Kathmandu while trying to march to the Chinese embassy. Tibet activists are hoping to use China's hosting of the Olympics to publicise their cause.

Before the marchers in India set off, the Dalai Lama said he approved of China hosting the games because it provided the world with a chance to pressurise the Beijing government to uphold the Olympic ideals of freedom of speech and equality.

Apollo Hospital returns to normal

Staff Reporter

All employees, including doctors and nurses in Apollo Hospital, who went on a sit-in strike demanding resignation of its Chief Executive and withdrawal of termination order against 150 staff on Saturday, returned to their work yesterday.

The Apollo Hospital, at Baridhara, has the highest number of foreign staff, including doctors and nurses, among the private hospitals in the capital.

During the daylong demonstrations, the Medicare systems of the hospital collapsed, mounting the suffering of 142 patients, now admitted to the hospital, as they did not get the support from attending physicians who expressed their solidarity with the striking colleagues.

Asked about the reason for the job cut, the hospital authority said that the hospital has some 1,400 employees though it needs some 800 of them to operate the hospital smoothly.

CA leaves for Senegal today to join OIC summit

BSS, Dhaka

Chief Adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed leaves here today for Senegal in northwest Africa to attend the two-day 11th Summit of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC).

Dakar, the capital of Senegal at the Atlantic Oceanside, has completed all preparations for hosting the OIC Summit to be held on March 13-14. Kings, heads of state and government, and representatives from 57 OIC member countries will join the Summit.

Dr Fakhruddin, who will lead the Bangladesh delegation at the high profile OIC Summit, will join other OIC leaders to reaffirm solidarity with the member states. On sidelines of the Summit, he will hold bilateral talks with other OIC leaders.