January 20, 2003	Monday	Ziqa'ad 16, 1423

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DERA ISMAIL KHAN, Jan 19: The chief of JUI-F and secretary- general of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, has said that his party will strive to enforce Shariat as the country owed its very genesis to the tenets of Islam.

He regretted that the dream of turning Pakistan into a true Islamic state remained unfulfilled even after a lapse of 54 years.

Talking to Dawn on Sunday, he said that the sacrifices of the Muslims forced the Britons to leave the region, but their legacy remained intact in the shape of their complex legal system.

Mr Rehman said that the MMA had no desire for power, otherwise it would not have rejected the political bounties when it was offered in return to form a coalition government at the centre.

The MMA leader warned the government not to fall victim to the American conspiracies, which he termed a planning to get the secrets of Pakistan’s nuclear programme. “It is the same trick which US played with Iraq,” he cautioned and said that the government was likely to fall prey to the US trap.

Mr Rehman said that the religious movements in Islamic states were the main hurdles in the way of United States’ new world order that was why the American masterminds were busy to crush them.

However, he made it clear that if raids on religious seminaries were not stopped, their activists would chalk out their own line of course.

He condemned the US military buildup in Gulf against Iraq and urged the Muslim states to try to resolve the issue amicably.