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Morshed says US has image problem in Bangladesh

UNB, Dhaka
Foreign Minister M Morshed Khan has acknowledged that the United States has an image problem in Bangladesh in the wake of the Iraq war.
"We need to work on this issue, but the United States is still considered a good friend of Bangladesh," he told the Washington Times in an interview.
The interview with editors and reporters of the Washington Times was published on Wednesday.
On Islamist violence, Morshed said with more than 140 million people, Bangladesh is the world's third largest Muslim majority nation after Indonesia and Pakistan. "Yet it has seen little of the homegrown Islamist violence that has plagued other states in the Muslim world," he pointed out. On the now-retracted Newsweek story on US military interrogators desecrating the Quran, Morshed said the report sparked just a few demonstrations in Bangladesh, not the deadly riots that hit Afghanistan and other Islamic states.
"Certainly, we will condemn any act against the Quran, but on the other hand you can't just go around killing and rioting in response," he said.
He rejected the idea that Islam and democracy are incompatible, saying democracy and elections are 'just a means to the end' of delivering and prosperity and peace to the people.
"I ask what is Muslim democracy, and no dictionary can define it for me," he said, adding, "democracy is democracy."
Morshed had earlier met
Secretary of State Condoleezza
Rice, National Security Adviser Stiphen J Hadley and senior lawmakers at the Capitol Hill.
On women empowerment and extremism, he said without economic opportunity Bangladesh women become a target for extremists as, he observed, "extremism flourishes in poverty."
The foreign minister said Bangladesh has used a 'silent social revolution' to boost women's rights and avoid the religious extremism that has plagued other Muslim countries.
He said Bangladesh pioneered the use of 'microcredit' loans, many to female entrepreneurs.
The minister said the Genevabased World Economic Forum last week ranked Bangladesh 39th out of 58 countries surveyed in reducing sex inequality in politics and the workplace.