Tags: India , Water Issues , Bangladesh , Dhaka

Dhaka: Bangladesh will resolve through talks any dispute with India over the waters of common rivers, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni has said even as the opposition demanded international intervention to prevent New Delhi from constructing a dam at Tipaimukh in the northeastern region.

"If the Tipaimukh or any other structure on upstream Indian regions threatens Bangladesh's interest, steps will be taken to resolve the dispute through talks," Moni told newsmen in the central Chandpur district.

She said the Indian government, has "assured us that they will in no way act to harm Bangladesh".

Moni's comments came as the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) said they would seek support from the international community, including the UN, to hold back India from constructing the Tipaimukh dam on river Barak that threatens "exposing half of the country to desertification".

"Construction of a dam at Tipaimukh would be a death-trap for Bangladesh. It is not an issue of mudslinging against (ruling) Awami League, it rather involves the very existence of the lives of the 15 crore people of the country," BNP vice president Hafizuddin Ahmed told newsmen yesterday.

BNP's secretary general Khandaker Delwar Hossain said it was the government's responsibility to protest against such a project "but it appears they are not willing to protect the interests of the people as it came to power with the help of alien forces".

Hossain said former Premier Khaleda Zia-led BNP would go for an all out movement against the Tipaimukh project and mobilise public opinion, and seek international community's intervention to stop India from implementing it. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had earlier said that Bangladesh would form an all-party parliamentary committee to review the impact and fix the country's stance on the under-construction cross-border dam along the northeastern frontier of India.

"The government is going to form the all-party parliamentary committee to fix our stance on the Tipaimukh dam issue," a prime minister's office spokesman quoted Hasina as saying after Indian High Commissioner in Dhaka Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty called on her two weeks back.

The prime minister, he said, told the Indian envoy that the committee would visit the dam area to review its impact on Bangladesh and submit a report to the parliament suggesting "what stance Bangladesh should take on the issue".

Chakravarty earlier confirmed that India was constructing the dam at the upstream of Barak river to install a hydro-electric plant but added that the structure would not be constructed for irrigation that requires massive withdrawal of waters that could affect the lower riparian Bangladesh.

The Barak, which is divided in two streams, the Surma and Kushiyara entering Bangladesh, is the main source of flow in the country's major Meghna basin, covering the northeastern and central regions.

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