February 6, 2003	Thursday	Zul Hijjah 4,1423

DHAKA, Feb 5: Bangladesh, which is heavily dependent on oil imports, is arranging an emergency reserve in case of war in Iraq, Finance Minister Saifur Rahman said.

“In case of a war over Iraq it would make things difficult for us, especially to import petrol from the Middle East,” Rahman told reporters late Tuesday.

“We are thus trying to build an emergency reserve in another country,” he said.

Bangladesh’s fuel reserves can cover an estimated one month. During the 1991 Gulf War, Bangladesh arranged a strategic fuel reserve in Singapore, which it did not need to tap into.

This time, Bangladeshi authorities are believed to be negotiating with Singapore and Hong Kong for a reserve, and looking to import fuel from nearby Indonesia and Malaysia, The Daily Star newspaper reported.

About 1.7 million Bangladeshis work in the Gulf, including one million in Saudi Arabia, 300,000 in the United Arab Emirates and more than 150,000 each in Kuwait and Oman, according to the expatriate ministry.

Only about one dozen Bangladeshis are known to work in Iraq, along with a small staff at the Bangladeshi embassy in Baghdad. They will be moved to neighbouring Jordan if the need arises, according to foreign ministry sources.

Bangladesh has called for a peaceful resolution to the Iraq crisis and said it would follow United Nations decisions on the issue.—AFP