Bangladesh wants border talks with India

Bangladeshi soldiers carry comrades' coffins after the border clash with India

DHAKA, Bangladesh -- Bangladesh has demanded a round of formal talks with India to defuse unprecedented border tension triggered by the deaths of 19 soldiers in armed clashes.

"We want formal talks with India this month, but we need time to prepare for such a meeting," Foreign Minister Abdus Samad Azad said after meeting senior civil and security officials on Thursday.

Bangladesh realised the urgency of such a meeting between the two friendly countries, he said.

On Monday India said it had invited a delegation from Dhaka to visit New Delhi from May 22 to 25, but the dates could be changed if Bangladesh desired.

The two will discuss the 6.5 km (four miles) of the 4,000 km (2,500 miles) frontier between them which remains to be demarcated, as well as the exchange of dozens of enclaves -- known as 'adverse possessions'.

These regions are marked on the map as belonging to one country but are occupied by the other.

Bangladeshi troops occupied one of these territories -- which Dhaka calls Padua, but New Delhi Pyrdiwah -- on the southern fringe of the Indian state of Meghalaya on April 15 and took control of an Indian Border Security Force outpost.

Dhaka says it was forced to move into the area because Indian troops refused to stop building a road near the border there, and had done so without firing a shot.

It says India retaliated two days later by opening a front 200 km (125 miles) to the west, in Baraibari across from the southern corner of Assam, where 16 Indian troops and three Bangladesh soldiers were killed.

Azad was optimistic about the talks and said the two countries were expected to talk about sharing of waters of common rivers.

Of 54 rivers flowing into the country, all but two are from India.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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