The government has turned down requests of the visiting European Union Election Exploratory Mission for meetings with the army, intelligence agencies, police and Border Guard Bangladesh.
“They wanted to meet officials [of these agencies] but the government did not allow them,” said an official of the foreign ministry.
The mission comprising five members led by Balthasar Benz of the European External Action Service arrived in Dhaka on Saturday and will stay until September 23.
When contacted, EU Ambassador in Dhaka William Hanna declined to make any comment on the matter.
Meanwhile, after a meeting at the foreign ministry on Tuesday, Hanna told journalists that they had had technical discussion with Foreign Secretary Md Shahidul Haque.
“We are looking at how the [election] observation could be organised, the various roles of the Election Commission and foreign ministry,” he said.
In reply to a question, he said deployment of army in the election had not been discussed in the meeting.
A foreign ministry official said the EU mission was technical in nature and a political mission would come ahead of the election.
“Today we discussed security arrangement, accommodation, visa processing for election observers and other technical issues,” he said.
The mission is scheduled to meet the Election Commission today.
The purpose of the mission is to assess the feasibility, usefulness and advisability of and to help prepare for a potential election observation mission to Bangladesh for an appointed period before, during and after the foreseen general elections.
The mission already had meetings with senior leaders of the Jatiya Party, Awami League and the BNP. It will not meet any leader of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami this time.
