LAHORE, Dec 1: Pakistan has offered countless sacrifices for Afghanistan during the past two decades and time has come that it should get compensated with the recognition of the Durand Line by the new government to be installed in the war-ravaged country, PML(QA) information secretary Syeda Abida Husain says.

Talking to Dawn on Saturday, she said Pakistan was the first country to accord recognition to the Taliban government, but it was a great mistake on the part of the then Nawaz Sharif government not to get anything in return for such a great step. That was the right time to take up with the Taliban the issue of the recognition of the Durand Line, she added.

Pakistan, she said, also did not get anything in lieu of the shelter it provided to millions of refugees or steps it took to mitigate the sufferings of the impoverished state.

It extended all possible cooperation to Afghanistan for trade with other countries, as a result of which Pakistan became a market for most of the smuggled goods or the ones imported duty-free. This led to a loss of billions of rupees in revenue, increasing the budget deficit every year, she said.

The PML(QA) leader said now that the international community was playing a role for the settlement of the Afghanistan problem and meetings were being held in Bonn to work out a new setup for the country, Pakistan should try to get compensated by having the border issue resolved for good.

For this purpose, she said, the Musharraf government should approach the world community with the request that the new government in Afghanistan, no matter who heads it, should be asked to recognize the Durand Line.

A former ambassador to the United States, Ms Abida also demanded an inquiry why despite the best relations it had with Afghanistan, Pakistan could not persuade Mulla Omar to turn Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden over to the United States, a step which could have averted many catastrophes the world would have to experience now.

She said the president should also order an inquiry why Foreign Minister Abdus Sattar could not participate in the recent six-plus-two meeting in the United States despite the fact that he was there. She said when representatives of other countries could make to the venue, why Pakistan’s foreign minister was unable to do that.

She demanded that President Musharraf should look into the two-year performance of the National Reconstruction Bureau and the National Accountability Bureau, two institutions set up by the present regime.

The president, she said, should find out why “mega scams” like changing the alignment of the motorway — which increased its length by a 100 kilometres, making the project economically unviable — and the establishment of 7,500 MW power generation projects against the requirement of only 2,500 MW, and that, too, against sovereign guarantees, could not be decided by courts of law.

She said there was also a need for the president to explain whether leaders against whom cases were still pending with the NAB would be allowed to contest the elections.

She said there was a dire need for evolving a mechanism to ensure that the election expenditure limit set by the law was not flouted by anyone. And in case the government failed to do so, like it failed in the local elections, free and fair elections could not be expected.

The PML leader said corrupt people, commission agents and relatives of the “swindler-bureaucrats and swindler-technocrats” always tried to reach the assemblies by purchasing votes. And once such elements reached there, they got their “investments” returned with huge dividends — through corrupt practices.

To keep such characters away from the sacred legislatures, she said, the government should evolve a fool-proof system of ensuring that nobody could transgress the limit of the electoral expenditure.

She alleged that the law was grossly flouted in the local elections as a result of which the horse trading was taken to the grassroots level.

Ms Abida said the president should review the hitherto performance of the district governments where Nazims were in conflict with bureaucracy, as a result of which people’s problems were not being solved.

She strongly supported a proposal by Pakistan Seraiki Party chief Taj Langah that the government should call an all-party conference in the beginning of the next year to evolve national consensus on the amendments the government wanted to make to the constitution.

She said this was the best way to avoid many subsequent conflicts and controversies on the subject.

Ms Abida said the government should address consequential instead of peripheral issues regarding elections.