Sheikh Hasina ready to work with Modi

Despite Indian PM’S hardline image

TOKYO, May 28, (AFP): Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said Wednesday she was ready to work with her new Indian counterpart Narendra Modi, despite his hardline image.

Hasina, who is serving as premier for the third time, said she has dealt with four different Indian governments — “This is the fifth one” — and was keen to maintain a working relationship with her powerful and populous neighbour.

“He has his own ideas. Now he has become the prime minister of India, I hope he will also act as the prime minister of India,” she told a press conference in Tokyo, on the fourth day of her visit to Japan.

Modi, sworn in Monday after a landslide election victory earlier this month, has an image as a hardliner, even within his own Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

He is regarded with deep suspicion by many in Pakistan after deadly anti-Muslim riots erupted in his western fiefdom of Gujarat in 2002.

However, Hasina said Muslimmajority Bangladesh has had good relations with India where differences have been resolved through discussions, such as concluding a treaty on water resources.

“What I believe is that through bilateral discussions, if there is any problem, we can solve it,” she said.

She stressed the region shares a “common enemy” in poverty, which it needs to fight through economic development.

“Bangladesh’s foreign policy is very clear. Friendship to all, and malice to none,” she said. LAHORE, Pakistan, May 28, (AFP): The husband of a pregnant Pakistani woman who was brutally beaten to death outside Lahore’s High Court for marrying him against her family’s wishes vowed Wednesday he would fight for justice.

Farzana Iqbal, 25, was attacked outside Lahore’s grand high court building by more than two dozen brickwielding assailants including her brother and father, who has been arrested, police said.

Three-months pregnant Iqbal had gone to testify in defence of her husband Muhammad Iqbal, who was accused by her relatives of kidnapping her and forcing her into the marriage.