November 7, 2003	Friday	Ramazan 11, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 6: The Senate Secretariat disallowed several questions about the army and the Inter-Services Intelligence raised by an opposition member terming them “secret and sensitive,” sources said on Thursday.

They said these questions — pertaining to the Kargil war, the air crash, which killed the PAF chief, and laws regulating the ISI — were raised by People’s Party Parliamentarians’ Senator Farhatullah Khan Babar.

Senator Babar, who had recently submitted these questions to the Senate Secretariat, confirmed that he had been informed by officials of the Senate Secretariat regarding dismissal of these questions.

The PPP senator said that the party’s chairperson, Benazir Bhutto, had taken a strong notice of the development and asked the party members to highlight the issue.

Senator Babar said the party had sent a letter to the Commonwealth voicing its deep concern in this regard.

He said the letter had been sent to Secretary-General of the Commonwealth Donald C. McKinnon.

“Curiously the government ... is not prepared to say whether an inquiry was held into the Kargil misadventure, which brought the two nuclear countries ... close to a war and which caused the struggle of Kashmiris for their rights to be labelled as cross-border terrorism,” the letter stated. “It is a reflection on the ... so-called roadmap to democracy that questions of importance are ruled out as (being) inadmissible,” the PPP told the Commonwealth’s secretary-general.

The letter also highlighted the arrest of PML-N’s acting president Makhdoom Javed Hashmi.

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