Last weekend, aide A.S.M. Hannan Shah, who was arrested on Monday, said Zia remained under pressure to leave, a charge the government denied.
DHAKA: Former Bangladesh prime minister Khaleda Zia will travel to Singapore for medical treatment, a party official said Tuesday, just days after an aide said she was under constant pressure to go into exile.
"Khaleda Zia is sick and her younger son Arafat Rahman is also sick. They will go to Singapore for treatment," Nazrul Islam Khan, the joint secretary general of Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), told reporters.
It was not known when Zia would leave or how long she would remain in Singapore.
Senior BNP leaders, however, had applied for permission to see her off at the airport, Khan added.
Last month, Zia's aides accused the country's military-backed emergency government of trying to force the former premier into exile in Saudi Arabia.
Zia reportedly agreed to leave the country in return for leniency for her two sons, who face corruption allegations, but the plan fell through.
Last weekend, aide A.S.M. Hannan Shah, who was arrested on Monday, said Zia remained under pressure to leave, a charge the government denied.
A senior police officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, said on Monday that the retired army brigadier general had been detained as part of the government's ongoing corruption crackdown.
Zia's BNP led a four-party coalition government until last October when a caretaker government took over, tasked with holding elections within three months.
But the head of the interim government, President Iajuddin Ahmed, resigned on January 11 following months of political unrest over allegations of poll rigging made against the BNP.
Ahmed also cancelled the elections and imposed emergency rule.
The new interim government took over the following day and has pledged to clean up Bangladesh politics before holding fresh elections before the end of 2008.
It has repeatedly denied trying to exile Zia and her rival Sheikh Hasina Wajed, who leads the country's other main party, the Awami League.
Critics have accused the two women of years of misrule that led to January's political crisis.
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