December 4, 2002	Wednesday	Ramazan 28,1423

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 3: The National Assembly has been picking up the work of strengthening ties with other parliaments after an interlude of more than three years. The speakers from Bangladesh, China, Cyprus, Palestine and Thailand have been among the first to greet the new speaker, Chaudhry Amir Hussain, who has also received expressions of goodwill from his counterparts, from a number of countries.

In this regard, the deputy speaker, Muhammd Yaqub, received the Turkish ambassador, Kemal GUR, in his chamber on Tuesday, which is seen as a symbolic gesture symbolizing Turkish Grand National Assembly’s desire for the resumption of bilateral ties with Pakistan parliament.

Nonetheless, the parliament in Pakistan may have to wait for a few more months to resume full activity, unless the Senate is convened, which will be some time in December, and only after that, the two chambers of the legislature can link with the international parliamentary community at multinational levels.

Last week, the Chinese ambassador came to parliament, bringing with him a letter from Li Peng, the president of the Standing Committee of the Chinese parliament, addressed to the speaker of National Assembly, inviting a parliamentary representative from Pakistan, to participate in the meeting of the Asian Parliamentarians for Peace (ASAP), which would be held at Beijing in January next. The ASAP is a regional body of Asian parliamentarians, which was formed at a meeting held at Dhaka in 2000. Incidentally, Pakistan could not attend the foundation meeting of the organization, because parliament of the country was then under suspension.

In the present scenario, we would only know when the Senate would after the oath-taking of Sindh assembly members. Hopefully, the Senate might be in place by end December, and if every thing goes well, perhaps the country’s parliament would be able to get representation at the ASAP conference in Beijing in January. But, we could decisively know about Pakistan’s presence at this conference, after both the chambers of our parliament begin to function, that is not the case at present. For the same reason, parliament may have to wait to convey its response for participation in the meeting of PUOICM (Parliamentary Union of OIC Member Countries), also to be held in Cameroon in January next.

The PUOICM is an active parliamentary association with more than 30 memberships of Muslim countries. Pakistan played a most constructive role in the creation of this union and the former speaker, Illahi Bukhsh Soomro, was elected in 1999 as the first chairman of the organization’s executive committee.

Pakistan’s membership of this body has been dormant after Oct 1999, and the only communication received from PUOICM headquarter at Tehran, was about the payment of membership fee, which worked out according to population and in case of Pakistan, the annual fee was more than $12,000 which, of course, the National and Senate could not pay because they remained under suspension at their home base.

As the two significant world parliamentary organizations —- the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) and Commonwealth Parliamentary Association (CPA) —- from which Pakistan has been temporarily suspended during the past three years, it would be in a position to regain membership after the two federal legislative chambers here at Islamabad resume their respective functions.

Considering the major thrust taken by Pakistan in the highest number of women legislators in any parliament of the world Pakistan must work closely with parliaments of the Muslim countries in revitalizing the project of the Association of Women Parliamentarians from the Islamic countries. The initiative was taken by Pakistan National Assembly, which organized the first meeting held at Islamabad on August 1-3, 1995. At least, 105 women parliamentarians attended the international event from more than 35 countries including, Algeria, Bangladesh, Bosnia, Brunei, Egypt, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Morocco, Nigeria, Turkey and many others. Pakistan, which created this organization, seems to have lost interest in it.

According to its foundation paper, the headquarter of this organization has to be at Islamabad but in reality it has no office and some office equipment and furniture has been kept in the custody of the National Assembly as a courtesy.— Jonaid Iqbal