Bangladesh, India open border bazaar

DHAKA - Bangladesh and India on Saturday opened a bazaar along their border as part of new moves to improve ties between the south Asian neighbours, officials said.

Bangladesh Commerce Minister Mohammad Faruk Khan and his Indian counterpart, Anand Sharma, inaugurated the "Border Haat" (bazaar) along the frontier of Kurigram in northern Bangladesh and the eastern Indian state of Meghalaya.

"The two ministers opened the Border Haat along the border by hoisting the national flags of the two nations," Bangladesh commerce ministry official Mokabbir Hossain told AFP by phone.

He said people living within a five-kilometre (three-mile) radius of the market will be allowed to sell goods produced or manufactured in the two countries.

Commerce minister Khan said the two countries plan to open a second border bazaar "within a few days".

He said the markets are aimed at reviving traditional trade links that people along the border region enjoyed before the subcontinent was partitioned into India and Pakistan in 1947 at independence from Britain.

East Pakistan later emerged in 1971 as independent Bangladesh.

Transactions will be duty-free in the once-a-week bazaar, where locals can use both the Bangladeshi taka and Indian rupee.

The market is the latest in a spate of moves initiated by New Delhi and Dhaka in the past two-and-a-half years to boost ties, which have often been frosty despite India helping Bangladesh gain its independence from Pakistan.

Relations have improved dramatically since 2009 when a new Bangladeshi government, led by the secular Awami League party, came to power and the neighbours have moved closer to solving key trade, security and border issues.

India's ruling Congress party chief Sonia Gandhi is to visit Dhaka on Monday where she will meet Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

Gandhi, considered India's most powerful politic! ian, is to receive a top state honour being awarded posthumously to her mother-in-law, Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi.

It was Indira Gandhi's government that intervened militarily to help Bangladesh in 1971.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is also due to visit to Dhaka in September.