New Delhi/Dhaka, Top Bangladesh politicians are seeking the blessings of Saudi royalty in their political alignments for the parliamentary poll due in January.

Former president and Jatiya Party chief Hussain Mohammed Ershad flew unannounced to Riyadh on Aug 27. Landing there around the same time was Minister of State for Home Lutfozzaman Babar, known to be close to Prime Minister Khaleda Zia and her businessman-politician son, Tareq Zia.

Well-placed diplomatic and intelligence sources in Dhaka and New Delhi confirmed that after Babar returned home, Tareq himself followed up with a quick visit to Riyadh earlier this week.

He was accompanied by Major General Rezzaqul Haider Chowdhury, the current chief of the National Security and Intelligence (NSI), Bangladesh's top intelligence outfit.

Chowdhury, these sources said, is Zia junior's confidant and involved in much of the back-room political activity.

Ershad is on the verge of joining the ruling alliance led by Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and wants the backing of the Saudi leadership, whom he cultivated during his days as Bangladesh's president (1982-90).

Everything would have been tied up, but a top leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), Ali Ahsan Mujahid, rushed to scuttle Ershad's entry. Mujahid is social welfare minister and JI secretary general. JI is part of the ruling alliance and wants to keep out Ershad.

Although there was no immediate word, Bangladesh watchers say the Riyadh parleys were critical to the alignments for the forthcoming elections.

Whether Ershad would gain entry into the alliance, and how JI, leading a four-party Islamist group called Islami Oikya Jote, reacts to it will be known in the next few days. There is urgency as, under the constitutional provisions, the Zia government must resign next month and make way for a caretaker government that would conduct the elections.

Ershad's entry could mean fewer seats for JI-led Islamists in the seat-sharing arrangement. JI also thinks that Ershad would dilute the alliance's clear nationalist-Islamist thrust against Sheikh Hasina who leads a 14-party opposition alliance.

A personal friend of the Saudi royals and a frequent visitor, Ershad, whose party won seven per cent votes and 14 seats in the last poll, is said to have assured them that his entry would make the ruling alliance a sure winner of the poll.

At 77, keen to clinch the deal that could make him the country's president again, he tried to bypass the Jamaat but has not met with success so far.

He does not want another round of prosecution and punishment, having been in jail for five years and paid heavy fines in corruption cases slapped against him by the previous (1991-96) Zia government.

Observers of the Bangladesh political scene say if Ershad is a friend, then the Jamaat is an ideological camp follower of the Saudis. Prime Minister Zia too has remained close to the Saudis, paying several visits, both for diplomatic reasons and for Haj.

Ershad is keeping another option open to pressurize Zia: he has an invitation from fellow-soldier from Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf. Having served in the Pakistan Army as a brigadier, Ershad would be several years senior to Musharraf.

But, if Ershad has close ties with the Pakistan Army, the BNP and the Jamaat too are influenced by how Pakistan looks at Bangladesh, the sources point out.

They express doubts whether Zia would allow Ershad to visit Islamabad and play his trump card. Ershad would require a formal permission from the Zia government.

If the deal works out, Ershad could emerge as Bangladesh's "queen maker" (both the contenders for power, Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina, are women). But, for this, he requires the joint blessing of Riyadh and Islamabad.