Clinton Alters Bangladesh Itinerary

Amid heightened security concerns, President Clinton arrived here Sunday night to begin a weeklong visit to South Asia, a region that he recently described as perhaps the most dangerous in the world.

Although Clinton was referring to the conflict between India and Pakistan, both nuclear powers, over the disputed region of Kashmir, the issue of safety took on another dimension Sunday night as the president abruptly canceled a visit scheduled for today to a village about 20 miles from Dhaka, the capital of neighboring Bangladesh.

His itinerary had called for Clinton to fly by helicopter from Dhaka to the village, Joypura, and then back. Instead, the president decided to meet with the villagers in Dhaka.

Also in doubt late Sunday was Clinton’s planned trip, also by helicopter, to a national monument honoring the million or more Bengalis who died in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence against Pakistan. He was supposed to go there from Joypura.

In a terse statement released shortly after the president’s arrival here, White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart said only that the visit to Joypura was off “because of concerns raised by the Secret Service.”

At Joypura, Clinton was to have visited a school and a health clinic and met with individual entrepreneurs who have benefited from so-called micro-credit loans, which were pioneered in Bangladesh and now are being widely offered in scores of Third World countries.

In Dhaka, the president today is to meet with the prime minister, Sheik Hasina Wajed, and attend a state dinner in his honor before returning to New Delhi.

Clinton is scheduled to spend most of this week in India in an effort to revitalize relations between Washington and New Delhi in the first visit to India by an American president in 22 years.

En route home, he is to make a brief stop in the Pakistani capital, Islamabad, to confer with Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who took over the government in a coup in October.

On Sunday, there were hints that Clinton might make a further stop on his way home, perhaps in Geneva, to meet with Syrian President Hafez Assad in an effort to encourage the peace process in the Middle East.

White House officials Sunday night refused to comment on whether such a meeting might take place, but they pointedly did not rule one out.

Just before Clinton arrived in New Delhi, protesters burned an effigy of the president. And according to the Associated Press, police in Kashmir beat back separatists seeking to reach New Delhi and draw attention to their cause.