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18-party’s fresh demo in Dhaka on Monday

Staff Correspondent
The BNP-led 18-party alliance will take to the streets in the capital on Monday, demanding party's missing leader Ilias Ali back and withdrawal of the arson and blast cases filed against its leaders.
It has also set demonstration programmes for the day before in all district headquarters and metropolitan cities, except for Dhaka, in efforts to exert pressure on the government to fulfil the demands.
BNP acting secretary general Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir yesterday declared these programmes at a rally in front of the party's Nayapaltan office in Dhaka. The opposition enforced five dawn-to-dusk hartals from April 22 to 30 and then threatened to launch agitation programmes harsher than hartal. The party has so far held three demonstrations this month, including yesterday's.
Meanwhile, the opposition's protest programmes were brought to a pause in view of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's Dhaka visit on May 5 and 6. On Sunday, the alliance declared that it wound announce tougher agitation programmes at yesterday's rally.
Hillary during the visit suggested that political parties should not hold destructive programme like hartals and settle down conflicts between them through dialogues.
The party leaders said they were ready to sit for dialogue if the government made an announcement of restoration of the caretaker government system and gave back Ilias to his family.
Against this backdrop, Fakhrul yesterday declared fresh programmes and said the party's next course of action would be declared from mass processions. He, however, did not say whether BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia would lead the processions.
Criticising the government for filing cases against opposition leaders after hartal hours on April 29, he said such steps would add fuel to the antigovernment movement.
The cases, filed against opposition leaders including Fakhrul, had forced them to go into hiding to evade arrest.
"The government is searching the houses of BNP leaders when they should focus on identifying the killers of jounralist couple Sagor and Runi," Fakhrul noted.
Accusing the government of throwing the country into confrontation, he said they would reject elections under a political government, and urged
that the constitution should be amended for restoration of the caretaker government system to oversee the next parliamentary elections.
The BNP leader said Ilias Ali had gone missing 20 days ago but the government was yet to trace him. "Government agencies had picked Ilias up. So, it is the government who has to give him back alive to his family."
BNP leaders Khandaker Mosharraf Hossain and Moudud Ahmed, Jatiya Ganatantrik Party President Shafiul Alam Prodhan, Bangladesh Jatiya Party Secretary General Shamim Al Mamun, and Liberal Democratic Party leader Redwan Ahmed, among others, addressed the rally.
Earlier in the day, Fakhrul visited the house of BNP's arrested leader Ruhul Kabir Rizvi. Rizvi was arrested on April 30 at Kakrail in the capital.