The BNP will not go for any tough street agitation over the verdicts in the August 21 grenade attack cases as the party thinks the ruling Awami League might use the "judgments as a weapon" to carry out a campaign against it during electioneering for national polls.

"We will not give the Awami League any chance to make the verdicts an issue before the parliamentary polls," a senior BNP leader, wishing anonymity, toldThe Daily Star yesterday.

The party is likely to organise protest rallies and form human chains across the country if its leaders are convicted in the cases. But it will not call for strikes and blockades.

According to party insiders, some top BNP leaders in a recent meeting discussed the trial process with the party's senior lawyers.

BNP leaders said their main focus was on the release of party Chairperson Khaleda Zia from jail, forging a "greater national unity" with other political parties and forcing the current government to hold the next national election under a nonpartisan interim government.

"If we launch a tough movement now, the focus on the other issues will be missing and the ruling party will try to describe it as a movement for saving the party men. So we will not go for any tough agitation programme now," a BNP standing committee member told this correspondent.

Meanwhile, the AL yesterday said its leaders would be on the city streets today, but they would not organise any programme.

Senior AL leaders would be at the AL central office on

Bangabandhu Avenue and would remain alert to any untoward situation.

Speaking at a programme in the capital, Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader said everyone knew that Tarique Rahman was the "mastermind" of the August 21 grenade attack.

He warned that law enforcers would take stern action if BNP tried to carry out any act of violence over the verdicts.

Twenty-four AL leaders and activists were killed and more than 300 others injured in the attack on Bangabandhu Avenue on August 21, 20014, with Hasina, the then opposition leader, escaping the attack narrowly.

'AL IS THE BENEFICIARY1 BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir yesterday claimed that his party men were not involved in the August 21 grenade attack and the AL was the "beneficiary" of the incident.

"I can say with responsibility that no BNP leaders like Tarique Rahman, Abdus Salam Pintu and Lutfozzaman Babar were involved in the grenade attack," he said at a discussion at Dhaka Reporters Unity.

He said many events happened and different kinds of discussions were held over the incident, but nobody dug up the truth.

Claiming that no fair investigation into the incident was ensured, Fakhrul said the AL was involved in "hatching a conspiracy to destroy the BNP by capitalising on the grenade attack incident”.

"The truth behind the attack will be revealed if the real perpetrators of the attack are identified," Fakhrul said.

Earlier on Monday, BNP at a press conference alleged that the government was trying to influence the judge of the Speedy Trial Tribunal-1 to implement its evil design by convicting Senior Vice Chairman Tarique Rahman and some other BNP leaders in the grenade attack cases.

The way Tarique Rahman, some other BNP leaders and then government high officials have been implicated in the August 21 cases was an affront to the judiciary, democracy and the country's independence and sovereignty, BNP Standing Committee Member Moudud Ahmed told journalists.