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UK willing to help Bangladesh in war crimes trial

Jasim Uddin KnAN,/wn London
The British government is willing to share its old records and provide legal assistance (o Bangladesh for the trial of war criminals for the sake of its fairness and neutrality, according to sources in die British Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
The UK government has put utmost emphasis on holding the trial in a fair and neutral manner, theysaid.
"We fully understand the desire of the government and many Bangladeshis to hold to account those who may have been guilty of war crimes during the war of independence," Towheed Feroze, senior press officer, British High
Commission in Dhaka, wrote in a mail in response to a query from The Daily Star to the British Foreign & Commonwealth Office in London.
Quoting from senior press officials Jon Ryan and Robert Morini of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, Feroze wrote that it is most important to the UK government that the war crimes trial are seen to be fair and neutral.
"The British government understands that this is an emotive and sensitive issue and that there is a demand among a large number of people to see war crime related trials become reality," The press official added.
On May 31, Foreign Minister Dipu Moni met British Minister
of International Defence and Security Ann Taylor Bolton during a security summit in Singapore and sought relevant old records available in the UK.
The British government had also suggested the Bangladesh government take UN assistance in investigating and prosecuting crimes against humanity and other serious violations of human rights and humanitarian law committed in 1971 to avert any criticism.
During the tenure of the immediate past caretaker government, the UN also agreed to provide assistance to Bangladesh in this regard.
Some available documents
Communications between the US embassy officials and USIS centres in Dhaka and
India, and the officials in Washington DC in 1971 shows (hat US officials working in diplomatic institutions within Bangladesh used the term 'selective genocide' to describe events at that time. The documents are now available at the Department of State website. The chronology of the communications is now available at the site: http:/ Zwww.gwu.edu/-nsarchiv/NS AEBB/NSAEBB79/.
Time Magazine in a special report on Bangladesh War of Independence published on August 02, 1971 (available in the online archive) said the genocide carried out by the Pakistani army and its collaborators is the most incredible calculated thing since the days of the Nazis in Poland.