September 16, 2003	Tuesday	Rajab 18, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Sep 15: Pakistan Muslim League-N chairman Raja Zafarul Haq says the current controversy over the Legal Framework Order (LFO) could lead to a bitter end which parties on both sides of the political divide must avoid.

In a Dawn Dialogue interview in Islamabad, he said the country was “going downwards” instead of learning lessons from past mistakes for which he blamed both the military and civilian rulers.

Associated with both military and civilian administrations, Raja Zafarul Haq said the present dispensation following the 1999 military takeover was the worst so far in which national institutions were “gasping for breath”.

He said the life of the present National Assembly, paralyzed for 10 months by noisy opposition protests against sweeping presidential powers provided by the LFO, was important but the life of the country was more important.

The PML-N chairman, given the present office after party leader Nawaz Sharif was toppled as prime minister on October 12, 1999 and imprisoned, ruled out any justification for a military role in Pakistani politics as envisioned by the LFO. He said the present government had neither an independent foreign policy nor an independent internal policy because its initial decision to become an ally in the US-led war against terrorism was not a step freely taken.