Sheikh Hasina’s India visit may yield transit agreement

Dhaka: Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina's December visit to New Delhi may result in some important agreements, the chief of which may be mutual transit facilities across each other's territories. This will allow India easier access to its far-flung north-eastern states and Bangladesh access to the markets of Nepal and Bhutan.

In advance of Sheikh Hasina's visit, Indian foreign secretary Nirupama Rao arrives in Dhaka tomorrow to do the ground work for the visit.

In anticipation of such an agreement, Sheikh Hasina was in Bhutan last week where she broached the topic of land transit to the Himalayan kingdom via Indian territory.

Transit facilities will go a long way in helping India develop infrastructure and industries in its north-eastern states, even as they become a source of handy revenue for Bangladesh with an additional advantage of opening other regional markets for its goods and services.

In signing the transit facilities pact, Hasina would be pushing aside hard-line anti-India sentiment in Dhaka's centres of power, which mostly surface when opposition leader Begum Khaleda Zia steps into power.

In the January 2005 energy ministers of India, Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a