Foreign Minister Dipu Moni on Monday told foreign diplomats that there was still room for talks on the upcoming elections under the amended constitution.
She said this a day after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina rejection outright the opposition demand for a non-party interim poll-time government.
“Definitely there is scope for dialogue within whatever the flexibility the constitution allows,” she told journalists at the end of an hour-long briefing.
She said the way newspapers presented the Prime Minister’s observations made at Sunday’s press meet raised doubts in the diplomatic community about any “scope for dialogue”.
She said she clarified that the Prime Minister had not said “there is no scope of dialogue” but that the “next election will be held as per the Constitution”.
Dipu Mony said, “We’ll follow all the constitutional rules after its 15th amendment,” she said and that “we can have a dialogue within whatever flexibility we have within the Constitution”.
She did not, however, spell out the ‘flexibilities’ the Constitution offers.
She said the opposition BNP had ruined the environment for talks in an oblique reference to the BNP chairperson’s 48-hour ultimatum and the celebration of her birthday on the Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s assassination day.
The BNP has been on the street since the government dropped the provision in the Constitution for a poll-time caretaker government.
The foreign minister said she told the diplomats that the Awami League was always ready for a dialogue.
Source: Bd news24