"We are seriously concerned about it and sent a note verbal through our high commissioner in New Delhi to the Indian government with a request to resolve the problem through discussion," Foreign Minister Morshed Khan was quoted as saying by the private UNB news agency.

Bangladesh's farm-dependent economy relies on water that flows from India during the annual monsoon that sweeps the Subcontinent from June to August. The sharing of water has been a key issue between the countries for decades.

The foreign minister said a dam at Tipaimukh on Assam's Barak River could dry up two downstream tributaries in northeastern Bangladesh, the Surma and the Kushiara.

A spokesman for a government river board which coordinates anti-flood operations in northeastern India said the dam remained a proposal and construction had not yet started.

Bangladesh's call for talks came two days after hundreds of protestors organised by the Bharater Nadi Aggression Protirodh Jatiya Committee (National Committee to Resist India's River Aggression) organised a two-day march in the northeastern district of Sylhet to protest the plan.

The delta nation of Bangladesh is frequently flooded from monsoon rains and melted snow from the Himalayas in the summer, but suffers from water shortages in the dry season.

Bangladesh has said it has lost three billion dollars of farming and fisheries output because of India's water diversion projects.

In 1970 India completed work on the Farakka Barrage to divert a large amount of water during the dry season from the Ganges, named the Padma in Bangladesh, to revive the Bhagirathi river in India's West Bengal state and stop the Calcutta port from silting.

Although a 30-year agreement between India and Bangladesh on water sharing from the Ganges was finally signed in 1996, no other agreements have been reached on scores of other shared rivers.

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