India and Bangladesh have signed five agreements including treaties on tackling cross-border crime and combating terrorism, BBC online reports Tuesday.
The agreements were signed on the first day of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s official visit to India. They included a pledge by Delhi to provide a 1 billion US dollar credit to improve Bangladesh’s infrastructure.
Officials say that much of the money provided by India will be used for improving Bangladesh’s railway network and dredging the rivers shared between the two countries. Sheikh Hasina assured the Indians that Bangladesh would not allow its soil to be used by groups “inimical to India”.
Ties between the two have improved after Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League-led government came to power last year. Since then Bangladesh has cracked down on Indian separatist rebels sheltering in the country and handed over several senior rebel leaders to India.
Sheikh Hasina on Tuesday, too, received the Indira Gandhi Prize for Peace, Disarmament and Development.
Nevertheless, the two countries still have a range of contentious issues to resolve. Bangladesh and India share more than 50 rivers but Bangladesh believes it is not getting enough water, as India has built a number of dams upstream.
A dispute over the maritime border in the Bay of Bengal is important as it is believed that there may be vast gas and oil deposits in the area.
