August 3, 2003	Sunday	Jumadi-us-Sani 4, 1424

DHAKA, Aug 2: Bangladesh is to protest India’s plans to interlink some of its major rivers to transfer water from surplus to deficit basins — a move that would threaten the livelihood and environment of the lower riparian neighbour, said minister for water resources Hafiz Uddin Ahmed, on Saturday

“We will definitely lodge a protest with New Delhi against its proposed plan to link rivers,” the minister said in Dhaka, while speaking at a pre-conference consultation for the 13th World Water Week.

The minister also said that Bangladesh might “also lobby international donor agencies not to fund the river linking project”.

“The water resources ministry has already sent a draft proposal protesting the Indian plan to the Prime Minister’s Office, from where it has been sent to the foreign ministry,” he said.

Ahmed said that according to international law, building any structure to divert river water by an upper riparian country without consulting the lower riparian neighbours was illegal.

Other speakers at the pre-conference consultation also feared that the proposed Indian plan of inter-linking, and particularly the withdrawal of waters from the Brahmaputra, would severely endanger Bangladesh’s ecology and economy.

There were also criticisms of the government for their lack of preparedness to face instances such as the Indian river linking project.