They will finalise a plan of action within the next seven to 10 days to launch the joint movement against the communal elements both in and outside the ruling alliance government.

Frontline leaders of the opposition parties arrived at the consensus yesterday at a roundtable on "Bomb attack, bomb scare, armed activities of the extreme fundamentalist forces: Bangladesh state and people's security" organised by Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal (JSD-Inu) at its office in the city.

The assembled political leaders and academicians called for a greater unity of the pro-liberation forces to fight back the recent uprising of Islamist terrorists.

Among the leaders, AL General Secretary (GS) Abdul Jalil said it is high time to unite and eliminate the fundamentalist forces.

"In the ruling coalition, the BNP is no more the dominant factor now, but Jamaat-e-Islami is," Jalil said, adding national unity is a must to face the anti-liberation forces, for which the goals and implementation strategies have to be set through discussions.

The AL GS said criticising the AL's shortcomings would not help in any way address the spectre of fundamentalism haunting the entire country, and added in the left-leaning 11-party alliance there is a section opposed to a unified movement with the AL.

Leaving that section aside, Jalil urged Communist Party of Bangladesh (CPB), Workers Party and others to join the broad opposition unity.

CPB President Manjurul Ahsan Khan said it was the United States that created the Islamist militant forces across the world for its own interests.

He also criticised both the country's major political parties -- the AL and the BNP -- for not daring to make proper investigation into the bomb attacks when in power, as, he alleged, US intelligence agencies are active behind the scene.

On unity Khan said, "Unity is already there; we are not divided." He also said it has to be kept in mind that piety, communalism and fundamentalism are not the same, adding most of the alems in the country are not communal. "So we have to respect the religious rights of people."

JSD President Hasanul Haq Inu said communalism, fatwas and militant activities are pushing the country towards a bloody civil war. To quell the evil there is no alternative to removing the alliance government and forming a national front to root out the country's extreme communal forces.

Earlier, JSD (Inu) GS Syed Jafar Sazzad presented the keynote paper to the roundtable, in which he observed bomb scare and insecurity have gripped the entire nation.

In all the bomb blasts, both during the previous government of the AL and the present one, the administration and the detective agencies utterly failed, as they could neither take precautionary steps nor arrest the persons responsible for the crimes.

But, Sazzad questioned whether it really was failure of detective agencies and administration or whether the government obstructed proper investigation by them.

The JSD GS said ruling coalition partners Jamaat and Islami Oikya Jote (IOJ) have been all through denying their involvement in the bomb attacks. But, as the majority of persons arrested so far in the cases directly or indirectly belong to Jamaat and the IOJ, they cannot escape their liability only by claiming innocence.

The keynote paper said Jamaat by its very nature is an armed force. It has been running militant operations in Chittagong, Cox's Bazar, Satkhira, Rajshahi and other parts of the country. Its student wing has seized control of many educational institutions including Chittagong University, Rajshahi University and Islamic University through killings and other criminal activities, it added.

Prof Mesbah Kamal of Dhaka University (DU) said the general mercy given to the war criminals of the Liberation War was a historical mistake. He demanded of the AL to implement its election pledge of punishing the war criminals if voted to power.

Workers Party GS Bimol Biswas, Jatiya Party (Monju) Secretary General Sheikh Shahidul Islam and Additional Secretary General Sadeq Siddiqui, and DU Assistant Prof Gobinda Chakraborti also spoke in the roundtable.