September 08, 2006	Friday	Sha'aban 14, 1427

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ISLAMABAD, Sept 7: Parliamentary secretary for defence Major (retd) Tanveer Hussain Syed on Thursday alleged that the United States had banned direct flights from Pakistan on the pretext of security concerns but for “commercial and geo-political gains.”

Responding to various supplementary questions during the question hour in the National Assembly, he regretted the US move, saying Pakistan was surprised by the decision as the country was a frontline state with Washington in the war against terrorism.

He said it was strange that PIA was operating direct flights to Canada with the same security measures but only the US had objections to the security arrangements at Pakistani airports. He claimed that the security arrangements in Pakistan were at par with international standards. He said it seemed that the US had some commercial interests behind the decisions as there were several big airlines in the country. He said a team of the US had arrived in Pakistan to hold talks on the issue.

Interestingly, the parliamentary secretary repeated several times that the US had some commercial interests behind the decision to ban direct flights from the US but before taking his seat while responding to the last supplementary question, he said there was no commercial interest but it seemed that the US had taken the decision due to some “geo-political concerns.”

Meanwhile, responding to another supplementary question, he admitted that Boeing 737 had become aging and they were not commercially viable to be operated on different sectors. He said the 737 aircraft were no more fuel-friendly and the PIA board had already taken the decision to replace the fleet.

When an opposition member criticised the PIA for delaying important decisions like it did in the case of grounding Fokker aircraft, the parliamentary secretary said there were some hidden and powerful elements which created hurdles in the implementation of such decisions. He, however, said he would not divulge the names of these powerful elements as he wanted to continue his job. He claimed that the credit for the decision to ground Fokker aircraft went to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and Defence Minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal.

In reply to another question, he said it was true that the parliamentarians were not getting certain facilities at airports. He said he had directed the airliner to provide special seats to women passengers and parliamentarians in accordance with their status.