The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

The Government is planning to hold the dialogue with the major political parties separately and with the smaller like-minded political parties in a group in order to arrive at consensus easily and save time.

Disclosing this after a meeting of the four policymakers of the Government yesterday, Commerce and Education Adviser Dr Hossain Zillur Rahman said Chief Adviser Dr Fakhruddin Ahmed is expected to address the nation on Saturday or Sunday, giving the guidelines of the national dialogue.

He said the four Advisers, entrusted to prepare the ground-work and guidelines of the talks, were meeting every day to make the modalities and agenda clearer so that the political leaders could sit across the dialogue table with the Government with an unambiguous picture of the pressing needs of the nation.

"However, we will finalise the mode of the (dialogue) sittings in consultation with the political parties," Dr Hossain Zillur said, adding, "We are in constant contact with the political leaders."

He said many areas of consensus between the Government and the political parties on major national issues have already been identified during the previous pre-dialogues, which the Advisers had with all the individual political parties separately. "Now, we think it will be easier to sit with smaller like-minded political parties in a groups so that the consensus could be arrived easily and time (length) of talks could be saved," he said.

Dr Hossain Zillur, however, refused to divulge the areas of consensus that the Government has identified through its pre-dialogues with the political parties, saying, "It is too early to announce that".

Held at his Law Ministry chamber with Law Adviser Advocate Hassan Ariff in the chair, the meeting was also attended by LGRD and Cooperatives Adviser Anwarul Iqbal and Communications, Housing and Public Works Adviser Maj Gen (retd) Golam Quader.