Bangladesh ups watch along Myanmar border

မေၾကာက္ပါနဲ ့ ကိုဘဂၤလားရယ္။. ျမန္မာစစ္တပ္ကို အဂၤလိပ္အေျမွာက္တခ်က္မေဖါက္ဘဲ သီေပါကိုဖမ္းသြားတာၾကည့္။ ဘာမွအစြမ္းမရိွ္ဘူး . မဲမဲ ျမင္ရာပစ္ ဘုန္းၾကီးဘဲ သတ္တတ္တာ။ ဝ႗္ေတာ ့လည္ခ်င္ေနျပီ။

DHAKA, Bangladesh (AP) — Bangladesh said it put border guards on alert Saturday because it had information that neighboring Myanmar was amassing troops after talks on oil and gas exploration in disputed seas off their coasts ended inconclusively, officials said.

Both countries claim areas in the Bay of Bengal that are believed to contain oil and gas reserves. Bangladesh has been angered by Myanmar's recent moves to begin prospecting in some of those areas.

"We have just reinforced the regular vigilance but there's nothing to worry about yet," A.K.M. Nurul Bahar, a top border guard official, said of the alert.

"We have information that Myanmar has increased its soldiers along the border with us," he said.

He would not give further details.

Bangladesh has a 170-mile land border with Myanmar.

Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, an adviser to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters in Dhaka on Saturday that Bangladesh wanted a peaceful solution to the dispute, but that it was ready to protect its sovereignty at any cost.

On Monday, Bangladesh accused Myanmar of sending several ships — apparently for prospecting — into a contested deep-sea area believed to contain hydrocarbon reserves.

The dispute surfaced after South Korea's Daewoo International Corp., which has been hired by Myanmar, started formal explorations in September. Bangladesh protested the move, saying it was intruding into its waters.

Myanmar has called Bangladesh's claims "unlawful and wrong."

Bangladesh said Friday that Daewoo has started dismantling its equipment in the disputed areas in response to its protests.

Bangladesh urged Myanmar earlier in the week to remove its ships and stop exploration until the sea boundary dispute is resolved, saying it would also refrain from exploration. It sent naval vessels to the area, but vowed to use diplomatic methods to solve the dispute.

But talks held in Myanmar's capital, Naypyitaw, ended inconclusively on Friday, the Independent newspaper reported Saturday.

The two sides have been engaged in long-standing talks to delineate their maritime border, with the next session scheduled for Nov. 16-17 in Dhaka.