Dhaka s pound of flesh
In a drastic reversal of posture, Bangladesh has set conditions for signing a memorandum of understanding (mou) on the construction of the Myanmar-Bangladesh-India gas pipeline. In the first meeting of the techno-economic working committee (tewc) on the gas pipeline, held in Yangon on February 24-25, 2005, Dhaka said it will sign the mou only if its bilateral issues with New Delhi are resolved. The three bilateral issues it raised at the meeting were the ones raised at the January 2005 ministerial level meeting too: provision of transit facility through India to import hydroelectricity from Nepal and Bhutan, transit facility for trade with these two nations and reduction of trade imbalance between India and Bangladesh. But its stance at the earlier meeting was quite restrained; it hadn't laid down these as conditions for cooperation on the issue (see Down To Earth,