KARACHI, March 17: Speakers at a meeting on Saturday urged the people to forge unity among themselves and wage a struggle to make Pakistan a strong country in the community of nations.

They said only a strong Pakistan could be able to meet present and future challenges. The meeting was organized by the Defence Society Residents’ Association in connection with the Pakistan Day.

They said God has granted all kinds of natural resources to the country but the successive rulers have not been sincere and honest and never worked with selfless zeal for the progress and prosperity of the country.

At the time of independence all the people were one nation, a Pakistani nation, but after that majority of the people started to think in terms of being a Punjabi, Pashtoon, Baloch, Muhajir, Sindhi, etc., due to which the country suffered, they observed.

Former chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Muzaffar Hassan, said Army is the most organized and disciplined organization that had been able to put the country back on the right track. Now, he said, it was for the politicians to utilize the opportunity properly for the national reconstruction.

He said everybody was responsible for bringing the country to the present state and it was everybody’s duty to work honestly and sincerely so that the country could progress and became stronger.

Chief Editor of Nawa-i-Waqt Majeed Nizami urging the people to elect honest and sincere politicians said the Army rather than ruling the country should concentrate on its primary and professional responsibilities of defending the country and allow the people to rule the country through their elected representatives.

He criticized the government for taking hasty decision on joining the US-led coalition. The chief executive should have taken the decision after consulting the brotherly Islamic countries, time-tested friend China, and building a national consensus on the issue, he maintained.

He said the West was not only against Osama or Afghanistan, but it was also against any Islamic country that was becoming stronger or even being able to stand against it, as had been evident from a recent announcement that Iran and Iraq would probably be the next American targets.

A former federal minister Shafqat Ali Shah Jamote said the decision to go along with the US-led coalition was a right step, otherwise, he said, the consequences for the country could have been disasterous.

He said because of the international events — like the Korean crisis, the former USSR’s invasion of Afghanistan and attack on the World Trade Centre — Pakistan’s international isolation had always come to an end and it had received all kinds of assistance.

President of the association Rear Admiral Sajjad Akbar, Surriya Maqsood and others also spoke.