KARACHI, Jan 22: The Sindh Bar Council has asked lawyers to observe a token strike on Friday to protest against the treatment being meted out to nuclear scientists.

Addressing a press conference on Thursday, SBC vice-chairman M. Yasin Azad and members Mustafa Lakhani, M. Sadiq Hidayatullah, Muhammad Aqil, M. Ismail Memon and Sattar Memon said "the so-called debriefing, undertaken at the instance of foreign powers for alleged transfer of nuclear technology, amounted to harassment". The lawyers of Sindh would join their colleagues across the country in staying away from courts from 10:30am onwards on Friday to condemn the treatment.

The SBC members castigated the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal for striking a deal with the government and President Perwez Musharraf on the Legal Framework Order and for supporting the 17th amendment to the Constitution. They reminded the MMA that the compromise was violative of a 14-point accord reached between it and the legal fraternity in August 2003.

The LFO, they said, could never be treated as part of the Constitution. A serving army chief was barred from assuming the office of president and neither the referendum, nor the vote of confidence secured by Gen Perwez Musharraf could change this constitutional position. The MMA, they added, has lost its credibility by concluding an agreement with the government.

A national convention of the lawyers' representatives would be held in Lahore on Feb 12 to decide the future course of action. Asked whether the bar associations would stop inviting MMA leaders to their functions and seminars, the SBC members said the issue would be considered by the convention along with other related matters.

Mr Lakhani, who is chairman of the SBC Kashmir committee, said Pakistan has gone back on its commitment to the Kashmiris by agreeing to a solution outside the framework of the United Nations resolutions. Kashmir, he added, was not a territorial dispute and any settlement without the participation of its people was doomed to fail. He urged the government to start the Muzaffarabad-Srinagar bus service at the earliest to enable the Kashmiri people to travel freely and meet their relatives without passports and visas.

The lawyers also criticized the operation in the Waziristan agency. The president's statement that the foreign forces in Afghanistan would launch an operation if it was not undertaken by Pakistan substantiated the allegations that the government was working under US pressure. They maintained that several government actions showed that policy matters of vital importance were being decided at the behest of foreign powers.

PROSECUTION: According to an SBC circular, meanwhile, the council has lodged an FIR against Preetamdas Kamrani for practising law without being enrolled as an advocate. Under the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, any person who is not an advocate and practises the profession of law shall be liable to be punished with imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year, or with fine, or both.