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Amini defiant on anti-Ahmadiyya demand
Staff Correspondent

A ruling coalition partner yesterday challenged the prime minister’s rejection of the demand for declaring Ahmadiyyas non-Muslim at a meeting of top alliance leaders and vowed to press on with its movement against the Muslim sect.

On a different front, Bangladesh Jatiya Party (BJP) and the Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ) decided to quit the alliance if their representatives were not included in the cabinet.

Fazlul Haq Amini, chairman of an IOJ offshoot, who was silent all through the two-hour meeting yesterday afternoon, told other leaders later that his party would compel the government to cave in to the anti-Ahmadiyya demand, meeting sources said.

“We will make it difficult for the government to run the country without agreeing to what we want,” an alliance leader quoted Amini as telling him.

Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s rejection of the demand came after IOJ Chairman Azizul Haq raised the anti-Ahmadiyya issue at the meeting.

Sources said if the ruling BNP declines to include representatives of the BJP and IOJ in the cabinet, they will demand that the prime minister drop the two Jamaat-e-Islami ministers from the cabinet.

A frontline BJP leader, asking not to be named, said the message of the resolution was conveyed to the prime minister through intelligence agencies.