ISLAMABAD, Jan 17: The opposition in the National Assembly on Tuesday called for US apology and compensation for Friday’s deadly airstrike in the Bajaur tribal area after defeating a government move to avoid a furious debate on the eve of Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz’s visit to the United States.

At the start of a special session called by them, the opposition parties demanded — though in vain — that the government should resign for failing to protect its citizens from foreign attacks and that the prime minister should cancel his week-long US visit beginning on Wednesday.

Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri was ready for a joint resolution over the airstrike that killed 18 people at Damadola village of the Bajaur Agency, but this did not happen owing to differences over wording of the draft. Later Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain adjourned the house for an unusually long recess of 10 days until January 27 after admitting opposition’s adjournment motions for a debate on the situation in Balochistan.

While three-hour sitting on the first day of the opposition-requisitioned session was dominated by angry speeches from opposition parties and even from some members of the ruling coalition, an adjournment motion submitted by the MMA seeking a formal debate on the issue is yet to be taken up.

The session’s agenda also includes a debate on high petroleum prices. However, it is yet to be seen if a planned debate on the controversial Kalabagh dam would be held after the cabinet’s Tuesday decision — also endorsed by President Pervez Musharraf — to start construction of the Bhasha dam.

The day was marked by strongly-worded denunciation of the Bajaur incident by MMA, ARD and some FATA legislators and comparatively milder condemnation from ruling partner Muttahida Qaumi Movement and the dissident Forward Bloc of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League.

MNAs from the ruling coalition tried, but in vain, to get the session adjourned or prorogued for lack of quorum as most of its members had left the house after opposition leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman had began a hard-hitting speech. One of them even drew the chair’s attention to what he called lack of quorum.

But a count showing enough opposition members present to make the quorum came in handy for them to pour some of the harshest scorn on the government. The opposition accused the government of trying to please Washington by boycotting a discussion on the killings of what they called innocent people by a foreign attack.

The ruling party members later returned to the house to hear denunciation of their action not only from the opposition but also by some of their own colleagues like Forward Bloc leader Riaz Hussain Pirzada and MQM member Kunwar Khalid Younis.

In what appeared to be an after-thought, Mr Kasuri said at the end of a sentimental speech that the ruling party members’ withdrawal from the house was aimed at showing anger against what he called opposition’s rejection of a planned “joint resolution”.

But Maulana Fazlur Rehman countered the minister, saying the opposition would agree to a joint resolution if a condemnation of Bajaur attack was accompanied by a joint call for recall of Pakistan’s ambassador from the United States, an unconditional American apology from the Pakistani people, compensation for the people killed and injured and property damaged and for taking the matter before the United Nations if Washington did not apologise and pay compensation.

In his speech interrupted by opposition protest shouts, the foreign minister said the government, too, was pained by the loss of civilian lives in Bajaur and had wasted no time in lodging protest with the American ambassador in Islamabad.

INTELLIGENCE-SHARING: The foreign minister said that Pakistan had intelligence-sharing arrangements not only with the United States but also with 50 other countries, including China and Saudi Arabia, to combat terrorism and narcotics. He assured the house that the government was trying to make the United States and the European Union realise that Islamabad’s cooperation with them would have difficulties “if people of Pakistan are not with us”.