January 31, 2002	Thursday	Ziqa’ad 16, 1422

DHAKA: The mainstream opposition Awami League (AL) is apparently finding it difficult to fix a date for its two-day national convention on “crimes against humanity” by the BNP government for lack of adequate preparations.

Reports say the AL wanted to make it a joint event of all opposition parties but no other party has so far confirmed participation in the convention.

Since that won’t serve the Awami League’s political purpose, the date has already been changed three times.

For the same reason - despite having finalized the necessary arrangements and programmes - the AL has not made the actual date of the convention public. A secrecy is being maintained.

The two-day convention was originally scheduled for Jan 17-18 and then Jan 19-20, but changed to Jan 27-28 as it coincided with the three-day “Biswa Ejtema”, an international congregation of Muslims belonging to “Tablighi Jamaat”, which began on Jan 19.

While the AL sources are tight-lipped about the date, media speculations suggest it is now likely to be held on Feb 14 and 15. Sceptics, however, suggest that the date may again be shifted to ensure greater opposition participation. The organizers are still unsure if they would like to invite the ruling BNP-led coalition.

The League sources claim that party chief Sheikh Hasina announced barely a month after the October general election that her party would organize a national convention on “Crime against Humanity” to project the alleged violations of human rights since the BNP-led four-party alliance government took over office on Oct 10.

The convention is expected to adopt a set of recommendations to generate public opinion against alleged human violations in the country for the first 100 days since the BNP-led government took over the reign.

Besides it would also project incidents of human right violations during the tenure of the last non-party caretaker government that was responsible for holding the general election.

According to AL sources, the organizers have prepared as many as nine “theme papers” to be discussed in the two-day convention.

These papers would present fact-sheets and discuss political violence, murder, rape, loot, arson, extortion and human displacement in the country since the AL handed over power to the caretaker government in mid-July last year.

BNP CONVENTION: The ruling Bangladesh Nationalists Party-led alliance, which had earlier said that it would hold a convention on “five years of misrule of the Awami League government” is also being delayed.

Sources suggest that the ruling alliance wanted the AL to go ahead with its convention first to enable them to make their show more eye-catching.

The AL sources claim that it was the AL which had first decided to hold the two-day convention and the ruling alliance is following it up with their own convention as a political retaliation.

However, BNP secretary general Abdul Man