ISLAMABAD, June 24: The government rushed the budget through the National Assembly on Thursday amid an uproar as opposition members protesting against insults from some ruling coalition MNAs tore up papers and walked out of the house.

Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali called the opposition's action linked to the inaugural meeting of the National Security Council later on Thursday "negative" and urged politicians to support and promote the present system.

As the assembly passed the Rs903 billion budget for the fiscal year 2004-05, the opposition parties held a news conference. They accused the government of provoking the incident, which seemed to overshadow their own rift over opposition's leadership in the house.

Besides the Finance Bill, the house passed the supplementary demands for grants and appropriations for 2003-04 amounting to Rs157 billion before being adjourned until Friday.

The Finance Bill was passed with amendments containing changes in some taxes that were announced by Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz on Tuesday. The trouble in the assembly began when Pakistan Muslim League member Rana Tariq Javed made some objectionable remarks about the leadership of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal soon after the house met in the morning.

Mr Javed, and later parliamentary secretaries Tanvir Hussain Syed (defence) and Sanaullah Khan Mastikhel (interior), targeted the MMA leadership for announcing a boycott of the NSC by two of the alliance's members - National Assembly opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman and NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani.

Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain refused to allow MMA members to reply to attacks on their leadership, provoking more anger from all opposition members, including those of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy and smaller parties.

"Go Musharraf go", "go speaker go", "down with fauji (military-made) budget", the opposition members chanted as they tore up budget papers and threw those in the air.

They kept shouting for about 20 minutes before storming out of the house, leaving the treasury benches to pass the budget within minutes. None of the hundreds of planned cut motions by opposition members could be moved and the house went on passing all of the finance minister's motions for the approval of the demands with voice vote.

The prime minister accused the opposition parties of causing obstructions without reason and blaming others for its own mistakes. "This is a negative approach," he said. "Nobody appreciates this, we depreciate it," he remarked.

"For God's sake learn from the experience (of the past)," he asked the opposition parties. "There has to be dialogue in parliament. Nobody makes a budget to derail the system," he said.

Politicians must "rise above personal interests" to save the present system, he said and added: "I want to tell all to support the system and take it forward." The prime minister particularly complained about Fazlur Rehman boycotting the NSC meeting.

"We accepted him and congratulated him (as opposition leader)," the prime minister said and added that "a great responsibility devolved on him on how to conduct himself and abide by his promise." He did not elaborate.

He said the NSC was visualized to have a say of the opposition but "probably it is hit by the evil eye". He said parliament should be happy about the NSC's first meeting as the council was its own creation like several other institutions though it had a wider scope concerned with the country's integrity and security as had similar councils in countries like the United States and India.

"These things are for the country, not for individuals like me, President Musharraf or (PML president) Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain," he said. The prime minister said the budget had given relief to the common man from inflation.

He praised the speaker for allowing opposition members to table cut motions about allocations for nine ministries rather than two or three as had been the practice in the past. "It seems there is one thing inside and another outside," he said about the opposition's attitude.