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| February 22, 2006 | Wednesday | Muharram 23, 1427 |
Parliamentary delegation to visit Brussels: Cartoon issue
ISLAMABAD, Feb 21: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and OIC Secretary-General Dr Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu agreed on Tuesday to extend interaction on the cartoon issue and the worldwide Muslim resentment.
The leaders held detailed talks at the Prime Minister’s House before addressing a joint news conference.
Foreign Minister Khurshid Kasuri and Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Khusro Bakhtiar assisted the premier during the talks.
Mr Aziz said the government had decided to send a parliamentary delegation to Brussels to meet European parliamentarians and convey the extreme anxiety persisting in Pakistan and elsewhere against the sacrilegious caricatures.
Mr Ihsanoglu appreciated the steps and the position that the government of Pakistan had taken to express the sentiments of Ummah on the issue of blasphemy and urged protesters not to get violent for it was against ‘Akhlaq-i-Muhammadi’.
Mr Aziz said the objective of the delegation would be to impress upon the European countries to make proper legislations and a mechanism to avoid recurrence of such incidents.
After discussing the issue with European leaders, he said, the delegation would visit Jeddah to inform the OIC secretary-general about the talks and solution proposed.
He said the opposition parties, including the components of ARD and MMA, would also be invited to join the proposed delegation to make it more representative and powerful.
He said that Pakistan agreed with a proposal of convening the OIC foreign minister’s conference to discuss the matter and seek a viable resolution in consultation with international forums.
The prime minister said: “We have condemned sacrilege of Holy Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon him) and have discussed various aspects of the issue and pondered over the mechanism to resolve it.”
The OIC, he said, would take up the issue on various forums to prevent recurrence of such incidents and to satisfy the sentiments of the Ummah.
He said: “We have appreciated the efforts by the OIC secretary-general in this connection and extended full support to the Muslim body.”
Mr Aziz said: “We believe in inter-faith harmony as Islam prohibits violence and we will keep open the option of dialogue to help defuse the fiery situation. We have condemned the element of violence which had entered in the global protest and caused loss to life and property.”
The OIC secretary-general said the cartoon issue was capturing the whole Ummah’s energies and Pakistan had played its role well.
He stressed joint efforts by the Ummah leadership to meet the challenge that it faced from the West.
He said the OIC had taken a number of steps at the UN General Assembly and Unesco to take the issue to a logical conclusion.
He said that the objective of all the activities was to ensure that no one in the West resorted to hurting the sentiments of Muslims or people of any other faith.
Replying to a question he said the report of the OIC eminent persons had been adopted along with a 10-year reform plan and its implementation had been taken up.
He said there was a paradigm shift in the OIC as it was becoming proactive and a joint voice of the Ummah.
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