June 15, 2003	Sunday	Rabi-us-Sani 14, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, June 14: The combined opposition in the National Assembly said on Saturday that President Pervez Musharraf must resign as his election to the office through last year’s referendum was an unconstitutional act.

The opposition parliamentary leaders made this demand at a joint news conference after walking out of the budget session.

PML-N acting President Makhdoom Javed Hashmi said President Pervez Musharraf’s admission to an Indian television channel that his decision to get himself elected through a referendum was incorrect, was a sufficient reason for him to step down as he had now become controversial personality.

He also said that threats of dissolution of the NWFP Assembly would mean that the very architect of these elected houses would himself destroy them.

On the Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz’s visit to Kahuta Research Laboratories(KRLs), Mr Hashmi said the nation would not accept any compromise or sell-out on nuclear programme’s freeze or its rollback.

He questioned why Mr Shaukat Aziz was preferred on prime minister Jamali to visit the most sensitive installations of the country.

Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz when asked by reporters, termed his visit to KRLs a routine matter mostly concerning with budget as he was accompanied by officials of his ministry.

The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal deputy parliamentary leader, Mr Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, said that opposition leaders discussed with the Speaker on Saturday the delay in the government-opposition party heads meeting to discuss the eleven-member committee report.

He said the president had no constitutional power to dissolve any provincial assembly and if the NWFP governor took such an action he would be playing into the hands of Centre.

He reiterated Alliance’s stance that it would not contest or hire its counsel in the Supreme Court case challenging educational qualifications of its MPs.

The opposition parties said that since they were boycotting the whole budget session they had decided not to attend the lunch hosted by the Speaker for members of lower house to celebrate the passage of the budget.

The MMA leader said that the president’s tirade against the NWFP government was part of his campaign to appease Americans and to make his coming meeting with president Bush a success. As far as the so-called allegations of Talibanization of the province was concerned he claimed no such word was available in the dictionary as the MMA was a democratic alliance with no links to Al Qaeda or Taliban.

To a question about links between religious parties and Taliban, he said at that time Gen Musharraf’s regime was also hands in gloves with the religious students of Afghanistan.

PML-N leader Chaudhry Nisar said every sensible Pakistani must sense as to what prestige had been left of their elected parliament when the budget, being the most important national document, was tabled and passed without participation of more then 150 opposition members of the lower house in only five days.