WASHINGTON (AFP) –
Bangladesh, with its growing economy and success in integrating Islamic schools, can serve as a "tremendous advertisement" for democracy worldwide, the US envoy there said Thursday.

Ambassador James Moriarty, on a visit to Washington, renewed US assessments that December's elections that brought Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina back to power were the freest in the South Asian country's history.

Speaking at the Asia Society, Moriarty said the nation long identified with dire poverty will easily maintain more than five percent annual growth thanks largely to the growing competitiveness of its textile industry.

"In terms of the US interest, if you see a Muslim-majority democracy of 160 million people climbing out of the abyss of poverty and becoming a reasonably prosperous middle-class country, it's a tremendous advertisement for what the combination of democracy and free markets can do in the world," he said.

Moriarty said Bangladesh may be able to offer lessons on how to integrate madrasas -- the Islamic schools that face criticism in parts of the world for graduating extremists.

He pointed to Sheikh Hasina's offer to support so-called kawmi madrasas -- those independent of the government -- if they agree to adopt a national curriculum.

"They've taken a fairly sophisticated view of, 'We're going to go after the guys who know are bad guys and we're going to work with the guys who are still in the system,'" Moriarty said.

The government hopes "instead of turning out kids who can only recite the Koran in Arabic and were only fit to teach other kids to recite the Koran in Arabic, we're going to have the madrasas adding to the national pool of talent," he said.

But Moriarty acknowledged Bangladesh still had major problems including poverty, bitter partisanship and corruption.

Moriarty said Bangladesh was making progress against corruption but that the scourge still "stymies democratic development."

"It discourages domestic and foreign investment and, frankly, could potentially derail the government of Bangladesh's ambitious agenda for the next four years and beyond," he said.