14-party sits to devise strategies

The Awami League-led 14-party coalition sat yesterday to discuss the latest political development of the country and also to devise strategies to face possible anti-government movements by the opposition.
The ruling party maintains the main opposition BNP and its key ally Jamaat-e-Islami are out to protect the war criminals.
The meeting was held at 7:00pm at Gono Bhaban, the official residence of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, also the AL president.
The meeting was called to improve coordination among the members of the 14-party alliance, AL acting general secretary Mahbubul Alam Hanif told The Daily Star.
He added that it was a part of AL's effort to forge a greater unity to resist the opposition's attempt "to create anarchy and to hinder war crimes trial".
On Monday, the AL sat with the Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB). The party will gradually hold such meetings with other pro-liberation war political parties.
The move comes following Sunday's violence in the capital and elsewhere in the country. On the day, a series of crude homemade bombs went off in central Dhaka as hundreds of activists of BNP and Jamaat clashed with police, smashed more than a dozen vehicles and set some of those on fire.
A 24-year-old youth was killed in a bomb explosion at the capital's Motijheel while a man died when some unruly people torched two vehicles in Sylhet, police said.
Violence also erupted outside the capital with the opposition activists torching at least 10 vehicles across the country.
The government and the opposition blamed each other for the violence.