LAHORE, Feb 11: MMA acting president Qazi Husain Ahmad has stressed the need for an all-party conference to form a national strategy to counter threats facing the country.

He was speaking at a book launching here on Wednesday. By inviting (PML-N patron) Nawaz Sharif and (PPP chairperson) Benazir Bhutto to the moot, Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali should prove that he is the chief executive of the country, the Qazi said.

He said the opposition could not call any such meeting because they did not have the authority to allow the exiled leaders return to the country. He told a questioner that arranging such a moot abroad was also useless as army generals might not attend it there.

Chiding the biased US policy on nuclear programmes of various countries, the Qazi asked Gen Pervez Musharraf about strategy he would chalk out in case he wanted to defy Washington on nuclear issue. But if he (Musharraf) talks of becoming a US ally, he should keep in mind that America will ask Islamabad to dismantle its atomic installations, he added.

Warning the army general that Pakistan's nuclear programme did not fit in the US world order, he urged him to give up his personal enmity against the exiled leaders for developing a national consensus on the strategy to steer the country out of the present crisis.

He said they (the religious parties) were not against denuclearizing the world but work on the task should be initiated from the US and the UK.

Condemning the United States for violating all international laws and moral values under the garb of pre-emptive strikes, the MMA leader said this policy was much older and was not adopted after the 9/11 incidents as was being propagated by the western media.

Even before the world wars, the Qazi said, the US authorities had planned not to lose the military edge their country had over the other states for the sole purpose of exploiting resources of the other nations.

He, however, believed that a force of truth and justice would rise which would counter US nefarious designs and bring peace to the world.

Former foreign minister Sardar Assef said Islamabad could sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty (NPT) only if Pakistan, India, Israel and North Korea were also made members of the nuclear club.

Warning the government that the west was tightening noose around Pakistan for denuclearizing it, he hoped that unlike in the past Gen Musharraf would not bow to international pressure as the nation had spent a heft sum of $42 billion on the atomic project.

"If Gen Musharraf attempted to shut down Kahuta research laboratories, the masses would shut him down" Denying that the nuclear programme had been rolled back or capped during Ms Bhutto's tenure, the former foreign minister said that the caretaker government of Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi had done so.

Rather a special envoy of (former) US president Clinton had visited Islamabad to express concern at "reports" that Pakistan had again increased production of enriched uranium, he said.

He said neo-conservatives in America believed that for corporate profit and controlling the world all moral and legal limits could be transgressed. He said these people belonged to savage Anglo-Saxon tribes of Germany and that was why Japan and not Germany or Italy were targeted with nuclear bombs in the WW-II.

Referring to 9/11 incidents, Foundation for Democracy Pakistan's Farrukh Suhail Goindi claimed he had got a US report presented to president Clinton by Rumsfeld in 1998 that to restart America's space weaponization programme it was necessary to create a second Pearl Harbour.

He said the CIA had presented a report, Vision 2020, to the Congress four years ago in which it was projected that 20 "rogue" countries would be denuclearized and de-missiled by the year 2015.

He alleged that the US had brought Gen Musharraf to power in Pakistan for the sole purpose of disbanding its nuclear and missile programmes. He said American imperialism unlike Britain and Dutch colonialism believed in cultural genocide and humiliation of humanity.

He alleged that the US, being the most irresponsible state, was driving the world to a nuclear war, devastation. Former federal minister S.M. Masud and Advocate Qureshi Muhammad Hafeez also spoke.