New Delhi: In the case of illegal immigration into India, Bangladesh’s response has always been a flat denial. With regard to the bird flu ravaging West Bengal it is one better: Not only does Dhaka see no link with the infected poultry, it is actually arguing that illegally procured birds from India spread the flu in Bangladesh.
Far from being willing to consider whether the traffic of infected poultry which ended up in small pens in West Bengal might have triggered the bird flu leading to culling of lakhs of birds, Bangladesh officials claimed that the traffic was one way — from India into Bangladesh.
Bangladesh fishing and livestock secretary Syed Ataur Rehman told TOI from Dhaka that the government had taken exception to public statements made by some Indian politicians that the virus came to India through illegal poultry trade from Bangladesh. He said: "Such allegations are unfair. Actually, poultry is illegally brought into Bangladesh by Indians and not the other way round. We have lodged an official protest with India’s MEA over such public comments." Senior Indian officials monitoring the flu point out that there could, indeed, be a two-way trade in poultry.
But they are stumped by the claim that it in only India that is the source of infected birds in Bangladesh. Besides officials in West Bengal, Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar had said that the H5N1 virus that has infected 13 districts of Bengal entered from Bangladesh.
India had made a formal request to the Bangladesh government to share the genetic history and information of its virus.
Health secretary Naresh Dayal had told TOI : "If we see that the virus circulating in Bengal is the same as the Bangladeshi type, we can almost be certain that illegal trade of infected poultry from Bangladesh into India was the cause of the present outbreak."
On another count, Bangladesh is being more cooperative. The genetic sequencing of the highly pathogenic H5N1 avian influenza strain, that is currently wreaking havoc in Bangladesh, has been completed and the eastern neighbour is willing to share the data with India.
It, however, has one condition: that India, in a reciprocal gesture, allow Bangladesh to study the genetic details of the H5N1 virus strain that hit Maharashtra, Manipur and is presently wreaking havoc in West Bengal. Rahman admitted that the genetic sequencing of the virus, that has been circulating in Bangladesh since March 2007, had been completed by the OIE Reference Laboratory for Avian Influenza in Weybridge, UK.
In reaction, India’s animal husbandry secretery Pradeep Kumat told TOI : "India is willing to share virus samples with Bangladesh."
Adding that Bangladesh’s foreign ministry has already communicated this to India’s external affairs ministry, Rahman said that a joint secretary level officer, Parikhit Dutta Ray, has been appointed as a liaison officer in Dhaka to especially deal with India’s requests, including setting up joint monitoring teams, sharing virus information and control and containment operations.
Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes
Also See
» Hindu Genocide in Kashmir
» Bangladesh Atrocities
