Bangladesh party rejects unity offer from rival

DHAKA (Reuters) - A call for national unity by the party of detained former Bangladesh prime minister Begum Khaleda Zia was immediately rebuffed on Friday by its main rival in a sign the country's political cracks are as wide as ever.

Khandaker Delwar Hossain, secretary-general of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and whose leader is in detention awaiting a corruption trial, appealed to the Awami League for unity ahead of elections scheduled for later this year.

"Please respond positively to our call for unity at least once, for God's sake and in the interest of the country," he said late on Thursday.

But the offer was immediately rejected.

"We have already made our principled stance known to them (BNP) and the whole nation that unity with the BNP, even amid a crisis, is not possible," said Awami general secretary Syed Ashraful Islam.

"Their policy and ideology are different from us. They make allies of fanatics and foes of the country. They help terrorists," he told reporters.

The Awami League, whose leader Sheikh Hasina is also in detention on graft charges, has criticized the BNP for an alliance with Jamaat-e-Islami, the country's biggest religion-based party.

Awami and its allies accuse Jamaat of helping the Pakistani army in human rights violations during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence against Pakistan, which Jamaat denies.

They also accuse the Jamaat of harboring Islamist militants responsible for a series of bomb and grenade attacks in 2004-05 when Khaleda was in power.

An army-backed interim government headed by former central bank chief Fakhruddin Ahmed took charge in Bangladesh in January 2007, following deadly violence between supporters of Hasina and Khaleda.

It imposed emergency rule, banned political activity, cancelled an election planned for January 22 last year, and detained hundreds of key political figures including Hasina and Khaleda, for alleged corruption.

As the two biggest parties squabble ahead of the vote, the New York-based Human Rights Watch said the government was using emergency rule to arrest thousands of people, including politicians, over the past week or so.

It said the crackdown followed the Awami League and BNP's refusal to join government talks.

"The timing and targets of the arrests are a dead giveaway they are politically motivated," said Brad Adams, Asia director of Human Rights Watch.

"It's obvious that they are paying the price for the political parties' refusal to accept the government's conditions to participate in the elections," he said in a statement issued on Thursday.

(Editing by Jeremy Laurence)