The government has urged the United Nations to review the convention on water sharing as it does not guarantee the rights of lower riparian countries, Water Resources Minister M Hafiz Uddin Ahmed said Monday.

The minister said he had called for a review of the convention at the 12th session of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development, held at the UN headquarters in New York between April 28 and 30.

“As the convention is not sat isfactorily in favour of us, we have urged the UN to review it [to safeguard rights of lower riparian countries],” he told newsmen at his office.

He would not, however, elaborate on the drawbacks in the convention.

A water resources ministry official told New Age that the UN Convention on Non-Navigational Use of International Water Resources “puts ground and surface water in a single grouping which means quantum of groundwater should also be included when discuss water sharing with India”.

He said the convention categorically pointed out that water basin would be determined on where rivers ended. “When we discuss water sharing with India, we consider the Ganges, the Brahmaputra and the Meghna as individual basins. So, the above clause goes against our interest.”

Hafiz said Bangladesh could not aggressively negotiate with India over the multi-billion-dollar river-linking project because of the convention. Neither Dhaka nor Delhi is a signatory to the convention.

The water resources minister said the commission had met to review poverty alleviation across the world. Water, sanitation and habitat came up for discussion, he added.

Hafiz said he had told the meeting that Bangladesh would reduce poverty before the stipulated timeframe of 2015. “I have also told the meeting about the potential danger Bangladesh will face if India implements the river-linking project.”

He claimed that the World Bank had promised to help Bangladesh to reduce the level of arsenic contamination.