ISLAMABAD, Oct 7: The National Assembly on Tuesday condemned Monday’s murder of its member and religious leader Maulana Azam Tariq, calling it a national tragedy, and demanded a better law and order to combat “sectarianism, terrorism and subversion”.

In a unanimous resolution, whose text was agreed after a long behind-the-scene wrangling between the ruling and opposition parties, the lower house urged the people to defeat the “nation’s enemies” with patience and sought a complete inquiry report on the shooting outside Islamabad that killed the Maulana and his four bodyguards.

The assembly met more than two hours behind schedule because of reported arguments on the wording of the resolution proposed by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and was adjourned until 10am on Friday after unanimously adopting the final Urdu text.

Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain did not allow speeches on the ground the slain member had not yet been buried, and cut-short a demand by a member of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) from Islamabad, Nayyar Hussain Bokhari, for compensation for businesses destroyed or damaged in the capital on Tuesday by demonstrators protesting against Maulana Tariq’s murder.

But opposition groups used a news conference to repeat their demand, originally voiced on Monday, that Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat resign for the alleged government failure to maintain law and order, particularly when senior US officials like Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Centcom commander Gen John Abizaid were visiting Islamabad.

Mr Hayat rejected the demand in talk to reporters after the assembly sitting.

The assembly met hours after violent protests in Islamabad that followed funeral prayers for Maulana Tariq near the parliament house on the four-lane Jinnah Avenue.

As read out by MMA’s Maulana Hamidul Haq Haqqani, the house resolution called Maulana Tariq a “martyr” — a word missing from the text later made available to reporters.

It said protection of people’s lives and property was a fundamental right and it was the responsibility of an elected government to take effective steps “to break the network of sectarianism, terrorism and subversion”.

The resolution urged the government to protect the country from “the designs of internal and external enemies,” expose all elements responsible for such activities, take a strong punitive action against them and present a full inquiry report on the incident before the house.

It called sectarianism, extremism, terrorism and subversion inimical to the country and asked people to “defeat the satanic designs of the nation’s enemies with patience and fortitude”.

ROW ON RESOLUTION: Leaders of the opposition parties later told reporters the ruling coalition had not proposed its own text of the condolence resolution but argued over the wording of the draft of MMA’s Liaquat Baloch during a joint meeting presided over by the speaker.