03 December 2004	Friday	20 Shawwal 1425

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BAHAWALPUR, Dec 2: MMA leader and Punjab Jamaat-i-Islami Amir Liaquat Baloch has alleged that intelligence agencies are out to disintegrate the opposition for it is mounting pressure on president Pervez Musharraf to take off his uniform after Dec 31.

Addressing a press conference here on Thursday, Mr Baloch claimed that despite pressure on MMA legislators, the government could not so far break up the opposition MPs. He sounded a note of warning that if the president could not leave the office of COAS by Dec 31, as he had earlier agreed, the whole democratic system would collapse.

The MMA leader replied in the affirmative when he was asked that the ARD stood for dismantling the present democratic set up while the MMA wanted to continue parliament. In spite of this, he said that all the opposition parties agreed on one-point agenda that the president should shed the uniform.

He claimed that under the 17th amendment, the president was constitutionally bound to take off his uniform by deadline. Mr Baloch threatened to launch a country-wide protest campaign if hurdles were created in the holding of a public meeting in Multan on Dec 5.

He said that a majority of the people were against the holding of two offices by the president simultaneously. He said the Balochistan government would have to be dissolved the day the MMA decided to quit the provincial assembly.

It was, he said, illogical on the part of the government that dams in the country could only be built if the president remained in uniform. He said that the dams could only be constructed with national consensus. He regretted that acting president Muhammad Mian Soomro had signed the uniform bill which he could not do constitutionally.