April 25, 2007	Wednesday	Rabi-us-Sani 07, 1428

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PESHAWAR, April 24: The Frontier police blocked the GT Road at different points and their counterparts from Punjab parked containers on the Attock Bridge, barring NWFP lawyers, political workers and transport carrying goods and passengers from entering Punjab on Tuesday.

The Motorway police made lawyers, political workers of various organisations and students get off the coaches and buses heading towards Punjab. Punjab police told the traders and commuters that they could not proceed till 3pm and it was better for them “to wait on the other side of the bridge in their own province”.

Provincial senior vice-president of the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), Hizbullah Gandapur told newsmen that a contingent of Frontier police stopped his vehicle at Jehangira and asked him to go back to Peshawar.

He said Station House Officer Haroon Khan and Sub-Inspector Hameed Khan, who were busy in dismounting people from vehicles, told him that that their top officials had ordered them not to allow anybody to enter Punjab.

He said he refused to obey them and drove towards the Attock Bridge. “When I reached the other side of the bridge, it was closed.

The Attock police had placed a huge container and sealed it off,” he said.

He said that on one hand the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal dubbed itself an opposition alliance, while on the other hand it was strengthening the hands of President Pervez Musharraf by sabotaging the protest against the regime.

Mr Gandapur said the old bridge which connected Punjab with the NWFP was also closed.

He said an Attock police official had told him that they would open the road after 3pm.

Talking to journalists at the Peshawar Press Club, NWFP Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Malik Zafar Azam criticised the closure of Attock Bridge by Punjab police and said it would create misunderstandings between the people of the two provinces.

He denied the MMA government’s involvement in the closure of the road to Punjab.

Earlier, the PML held a march rally in support of Gen Musharraf and asked the lawyer community not to politicise a constitutional issues.

Federal Minister Ami Muqam, who led the procession from the PML secretariat to the GT Road, criticised the major opposition parties for what he called giving political colour to an apolitical matter.

PML workers also chanted slogans in favour of Gen Musharraf and against what they dubbed ‘political’ judge.