Army fans out across Bangladesh ahead of election

DHAKA, Dec 10 (Reuters) Troops took up positions around the Bangladeshi capital and in all major cities and towns today after the government ordered the deployment to ensure a peaceful run-up to elections next month.

President Iajuddin Ahmed ordered the deployment on Saturday amid a deterioration of public order and threats by a multi-party alliance led by former prime minister Sheikh Hasina, head of the Awami League, to besiege the president's palace.

In Dhaka, soldiers entered the presidential compound, Bangabhaban, and other locations including the university campus. At the presidential palace police and paramilitary troops were withdrawn, witnesses said.

The campus is a hotbed of support for both Hasina and her rival in the January 23 elections, former prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia.

Khaleda ended her five-year tenure as prime minister late in October and handed power to the interim government, intended to oversee the polls.

Since then, protests and counter-protests by Hasina's followers, who want sweeping changes to the election and its organisers, and Khaleda's supporters, who want the status quo, have turned violent.

At least 44 people have been killed and hundreds injured in clashes between political activists since late October.

REGRET The U S embassy in a statement today evening said it regretted that the ''negotiation process (between the two major parties) has been stopped''.

It hoped that the authorities would clearly explain the rules of army engagement and said the deployment would not undermine efforts to create a positive election environment.

The statement was issued after Ambassador Patricia A Butenis had met Hasina and Khaleda Zia, who have alternated as premiers of impoverished Bangladesh for the last 15 years.

Officials said the troops would help civil authorities keep order until a new government takes office after the election.

But three of the 10 members of the interim administration's advisory council said the deployment could complicate the political situation.

Both Hasan Mashhud Chowdhury, predecessor of the current army chief, and council member C M Shafi Sami disagreed.

''The deployment of army was not discussed with the council of advisers, and we still do not know for what purpose the army was called in by the president,'' adviser Akbar Ali Khan told reporters.

Defence analyst Shakawat Hossain, a retired army brigadier, said: ''Just deployment of the army ... is not going to solve the country's political problems. If the president felt it necessary, he should have proclaimed a state of emergency.'' Hasina said she planned to hold a countrywide protest on Tuesday against the president's decision to deploy army.

She told reporters the president had ''trampled on people's wishes by summoning the army''.

''There was no threat to (his) security or to that of the country that could warrant the army's deployment. People will give their response to such excesses,'' Hasina added.

BNP secretary-general Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan said the president had no alternative but to deploy the army while a major alliance seeks to push the country into anarchy and lawlessness. ''He was absolutely right,'' Bhuiyan said.

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