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DHAKA - Bangladesh's emergency government opened talks with the country's sidelined political parties on Thursday as part of a roadmap to restoring democracy, officials said.
The army-backed authority, which took office in January last year following months of political turmoil, has pledged that new elections will be held by December 2008.
Chief government spokesman Syed Fahim Monaem said Bangladesh's caretaker leader, Fakhruddin Ahmed, had opened talks with two of the smaller parties.
Officials said he intends to eventually meet with all the parties over the coming days and weeks.
"I believe that the dialogue will yield good results for everyone. We want to hold a free, fair and credible election and have a transition to true democracy," Ahmed told reporters before the talks started.
Interim commerce minister Hussain Zillur Rahman has also described the talks as "crucial for the country's future."
All of Bangladesh's parties, including the main Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the Awami League, which alternately ruled the country between 1991 and 2006, have been invited to join the dialogue.
But the two parties -- whose uncompromising rivalry sparked the imposition of an emergency -- have said they are still undecided whether to join the dialogue.
BNP leader Khaleda Zia and Awami League leader Sheikh Hasina Wajed are both in custody on corruption and other charges as part of the emergency government's effort to clean up Bangladesh's notoriously dysfunctional political system.
"The dialogue would be meaningless with our leader still detained," said Nazrul Islam, a spokesman of the BNP, most of whose prominent figures have been arrested over corruption charges.
And Zillur Rahman, the Awami League's acting leader, said "any dialogue without the presence of our leader will have very little success."
"She should be released for the dialogue to bear any fruit," he said.
- AFP /ls
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