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| 26 February 2004 | Thursday | 05 Muharram 1425 |
Cabinet will be expanded at right time, says Jamali
ISLAMABAD, Feb 25: Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali rejected on Wednesday the impression of any hurdle in the planned expansion of the federal cabinet, and said more ministers would be inducted at an appropriate time.
"There is no hindrance in the expansion of the cabinet, which will be expanded at an appropriate time," he said while talking to reporters at the Parliament House where he had come to briefly attend the Senate proceedings.
The prime minister has been quoted on a number of times that he will expand the cabinet soon. The recent such statement came before Eidul Azha in which he had stated that he would expand his cabinet soon after Eid.
When his comments were sought regarding a reported statement of PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto on nuclear proliferation, Mr Jamali said he could not go into the legalities of this issue because he had not read the statement. "Only those who were present at that time can answer," he said.
"I am not a law expert," he said when he was asked whether the PPP leader's statement amounted to treason. Ms Bhutto, in an interview to a foreign newspaper, had said she was approached several times when she was the prime minister with suggestions to export nuclear technology.
About disallowing PONM, an alliance of nationalist parties, to hold a seminar at Parliament Lodges in Islamabad on Sunday, the prime minister said the lodges were meant for residential purposes of parliamentarians and not to hold seminars.
However, he avoided a direct answer when asked why the ruling party had held functions and seminars on a number of occasions in the past on the same premises.
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