Non-Nato status a 'threat' to country LHCBA resolution
By Our Correspondent
LAHORE, July 1: The Lahore High Court Bar Association on Thursday urged parliament and political parties not to approve Pakistan's status as a non-NATO US ally because it was fraught with dangers to the national security.
A resolution, adopted by the high court bar's general house meeting with president Ahmad Awais in the chair, said the status conferred on Islamabad on June 17 would give the United States an opportunity to enhance its infiltration in Pakistan.
The resolution, moved jointly by advocates Dr Muhammad Akmal Saleemi and Sheikh Mushtaq Ali, said the status would also endanger the country's sensitive installations, especially its nuclear capability (including the Kahuta plant), which would come under the direct US control.
According to the resolution, the US fully entrenched itself politically, economically and strategically in the countries which it conferred the same status in the past. It said the countries like Argentine, Australia, Bahrain, Egypt, Japan, Jordan, Thailand and Israel virtually stood reduced to the US colonies after they were declared as the non-NATO allies.
The US, it said, would in no way keep a reasonable balance between Pakistan and Israel, the two enemy countries, in supporting or opposing different world issues, especially the Middle East.
The LHCBA has sent copies of the resolution to the National Assembly speaker, senate chairman, the Supreme Court Bar Association, provincial bars of the high courts, heads of parliamentary parties in the senate, the National Assembly and political parties.
BAR MEMBERS: Members of the Punjab Bar Council and leaders of the Lahore High Court Bar Association and the Lahore Bar Association announced on Thursday that they would resign and launch a protest movement if the government delayed the bar council elections.
The announcement came at a meeting organized by the People's Lawyers Forum to register protest against uncertainty looming large over the Punjab Bar Council elections due to be held by Nov 30 this year.
The Punjab government says these elections cannot be held without amending the Legal Practitioners and Bar Councils Act, 1973, which provides for rolls of lawyers on the basis of administrative divisions that no longer exist.
Advocate-General Syed Shabbar Raza Razvi has said a request to the federal government for necessary amendment to the act has already been sent. However, all the lawyer representative bodies do not agree with the provincial government's standpoint on the plea that the Pakistan Bar Council had affected an amendment to the rules under the act and this should be sufficient to hold the bar council elections as was done by the NWFP bar council.
The conflict between the government and the bars is gaining momentum and lawyers understand that the government is not sincere in conducting council elections for "ulterior motives."
The PLF held the first protest meeting during which members of the Punjab Bar Council, the Lahore Bar Association and candidates vented their feelings against what, they said, a deliberate government attempt to weaken lawyers' unity and damage their bodies.
A number of lawyers turned to the meeting to cast aspersions on the government. About 100 members of the Punjab bar, they said, would resign in protest. They said: "The government was out to wreck their representative institutions, weaken their unity and harm their democratic movement by making the Punjab Bar Council elections controversial."
