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ISLAMABAD, Dec 10: The government told the Senate on Wednesday that it would not compromise its stand on Kashmir dispute with India while seeking peace with New Delhi.
The affirmation of Islamabad’s position came in a speech by Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Raza Hayat Hiraj while he rejected an opposition charge that the government no longer regarded Kashmir as a “core issue” in order to appease India.
The opposition parties walked out of the upper house before the minister’s speech to keep up their anti-LFO protest after noisy desk-thumping and slogan-chanting.
“We want peace (with India)...but Kashmir remains our inseparable part and our jugular vein,” Mr Hiraj said while replying to the allegation made in a hard-hitting speech by a leader of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, Prof Sajid Meer, before opposition senators stormed out of the house chanting slogans against President Pervez Musharraf and his Legal Framework Order.
The minister expressed his hope that the summit conference of the seven-nation South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc), due to be held in Islamabad early next month, would help peace moves made by the two countries in recent weeks.
“Why should we not move for peace?” he asked in his brief speech, which followed protests by several other members of the ruling coalition against Mr Meer’s criticism of the role of army generals in what he called a denial of authority to people’s elected representatives.
The minister also rejected an allegation that the government had bowed to Western pressures for the sake of economic aid by resorting to such acts as reported detention of some staff members of the Kahuta nuclear research laboratories.
“We do not seek aid, we want trade,” he said and added that this policy was responsible for the rise of the country’s foreign exchange reserve to more than $12 billion.
“The parliament, people and the cabinet are powerless,” Prof Meer said as he accused the generals of trampling upon people’s rights and urged the ruling coalition to join the opposition struggle for “returning people’s rights to them”.
“You should become politicians rather than batmen of the generals,” he said to the senators on the treasury benches and added: “You should side with the people in the fight between the people and the generals.”
ANGRY HOUSE: Except for unity against the opposition, the ruling coalition appeared an angry house, mainly about ministers, most of whom were not present in the house.
Mr Hiraj, who belongs to PPP-Patriots, bore the brunt of the anger when he was answering questions on behalf of his group colleagues Defence Minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal and Interior Minister Syed Faisal Saleh Hayat.
The unusual grilling of the minister from members of other parties on the treasury benches seemed to reflect some of their famous grouse about important ministries given to the Patriots group.
Mr Hiraj was bombarded with a flurry of supplementary questions from his own coalition colleagues, most of whom seemed unsatisfied with his performance.
MQM senator Babar Khan Ghori was particularly sarcastic as he repeatedly reminded the minister that “your are a Patriot and our own”.
Absence of Industries and Production Minister Liaqat Ali Jatoi led to a third deferment of Mr Ghori’s call-attention notice to seek a discussion on the government’s ban on the import of re-conditioned cars before chairman Mohammedmian Soomro adjourned the house until 5.30 pm on Friday.
The start of Wednesday’s proceedings after a day’s recess saw an unusual demand from an MQM member, Mohammad Abbas Komaili, for the release of MMA leader Allama Sajid Ali Naqvi, who was arrested last month in a government crackdown on religious groups accused of extremism.
Otherwise, he said, Mr Naqvi should be given “A” class in jail or put under house arrest.
In what seemed to be an arranged affair, opposition senators spared Mr Komaili any interruption as he denounced Mr Naqvi’s arrest that he said was a “great injustice” and based on a “wrong FIR”.
There was no government response to Mr Komaili’s demand.
After the opposition walkout, ruling coalition members also argued among themselves over a demand by a senator for setting up a committee to probe an alleged lack of transparency in the award of the contract for road project worth more than one million dollar in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas by the National Highway Authority.
The chairman promised to look into the matter after consulting Communications Minister Ghous Bakhsh Khan Mahar, who was not present in the house.
