December 15, 2005	Thursday	Ziqa’ad 12, 1426

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ISLAMABAD, Dec 14: The Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) on Wednesday criticized the US ambassador for his observations on the democracy run by a general in Pakistan and asked him to stop playing the role of a viceroy.

Speaking at a joint news conference at the parliament house cafeteria, MNAs Tehmina Daultana and Khwaja Saad Rafiq said General Musharraf was occupying power with the active patronage of the United States.

They said terming last decade’s civil democracy a failure and describing Gen Musharraf’s engineered democracy as satisfactory was unbecoming of a country which was known as one of the biggest democracies in the world.

Ms Daultana said that she had heard Christina Rocca saying that Gen Musharraf had pledged to her country that he would shed his uniform before 2007 while the US ambassador was commending his rule in uniform.

She said Gen Musharraf was running the government in such a way that the prime minister had no role as a democratically-elected head of government.

She alleged that the huge deployment of army had failed to take control of the situation on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border as Taliban was controlling the administration in North Waziristan agency and the system which had failed in Afghanistan was now being imported in the country.

Ms Daultana said that Pakistan was a sovereign state and it should talk with the US on equal terms, instead of advancing its agenda.

Khwaja Saad Rafiq said the US envoy should stop playing the role of a viceroy as Pakistan did not need anyone’s certificate about how to run civil democracy.

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