Agence France Presse

New Delhi, February 1:

India is sending a team to Bangladesh to assess security for a regional leader’s summit in Dhaka next week after three-days of opposition sponsored strikes, a foreign ministry spokesman said today.

A news report earlier today said Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh could cancel his visit to Dhaka due to political unrest there.

“I can tell you that a high-level security team is being dispatched from India today to make a fresh assessment of the situation on the ground,” foreign ministry spokesman Navtej Sarna said responding to the report.

A three-day nationwide strike called to protest a deadly grenade attack ended yesterday but the opposition announced three more days of stoppages in the run-up to a regional summit.

A former finance minister and four opposition Awami League activists died in the grenade attack on Thursday in northeastern Bangladesh.

The heads of state from seven south Asian countries — Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, the Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka — are due to meet in Dhaka from February 6-7 for the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation summit.

Singh is scheduled to meet Pakistan’s PM Shaukat Aziz on the fringes of the summit amid a tentative peace process between the two rivals.