PARODYING a popular ad line for televisions, the ISI presence in Bangladesh can be described as "Owners delight, Neighbours eye sore".

A 188- page booklet brought out by the Foreign Office doesn’t go that far in its description of the neighbour but doesn’t mince words in pulling punches at Dhaka. It terms the Pakistan High Commission in Dhaka as the ‘nerve centre’ of ISI activities, a fact known to people of the northeast for a while but a revelation to rest of India now.

Pakistani intelligence officials have long been engaged in networking with and coordinating activities of North-Eastern insurgent groups and Islamic extremist elements in Bangladesh, the publication says thus putting an official imprometur on the subject.

Besides making ‘extensive inroads’ into Bangladeshi organisations like Jamaat-e-Islami, Harkat-ul-Jehad al-Islami and several other ‘anti-Awami League organisations’, the ISI operatives, ‘in association with Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI), continue to provide assistance to various Indian insurgent groups present in Bangladesh’, the booklet said.

Titled ‘Pakistan’s Involvement in Terrorism against India’, the booklet gives several instances of the ISI activities and says the ‘strong links’ between ISI and Indian insurgent outfits like ULFA, All Tripura Tiger Force, National Democratic Front of Bodoland and those belonging to Manipur and Nagaland, ‘for several year’ have now been ‘firmly established’.

External Affairs Minister Yashwant Sinha has told Lok Sabha about ISI activities in Bangladesh. He said the Pak agency foments anti-India passions and aids and abets Indian insurgent groups based in Bangladesh.

Stating that after the US-led operations in Afghanistan, Al Qaeda elements had taken shelter in Bangladesh, Sinha has said a large number of madrassas have also sprung up along the Indo-Bangla border.