Why polls-dialogue with BNP, asks PM

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has wondered why the issue of holding a dialogue with the BNP over the next national polls are being raised again and again.
She said the BNP would have to pay for its "political mistake" of boycotting the Jan 5 general elections, according to a news agency.
In an interview with the BBC Bangla during her last week's London visit, she said neither the presence nor the absence of the BNP and its ally Jamaat-e-Islami in the Parliament would affect anything.
An audiotape of the interview was published on the BBC Bangla website Thursday.
When asked why there was no apparent initiative to sit for talks with the BNP over the next polls, Hasina said it was unclear to her as to why everyone was so bothered about the dialogue issue.
"I took initiative for talks as the prime minister... I myself had made a telephone call and everyone knows the rest," she said.
The BNP and its allies stayed away from the 10th national polls demanding supervision by a non-party neutral caretaker government, a provision scrapped through the 15th Constitutional Amendment.
Hasina's government stuck to its decision to supervise the polls citing Constitutional clause.
The prime minister had called BNP chief Khaleda Zia to sit for talks before the elections but the latter turned down the offer citing her party's pre-announced shutdown programme. "Who is to be held liable if a party makes a political mistake?" she asked in the interview.
Awami League President Hasina alleged the BNP boycotted the polls as its key ally Jamaat could not participate in it.