May 08, 2007	Tuesday	Rabi-us-Sani 20, 1428

PESHAWAR, May 7: The People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) has asked the NWFP government to arrest the killers of its provincial senior vice-president Syed Qamar Abbas by Wednesday. Otherwise, it said, the PPP would work out its own plan of action.

Speaking at a press conference here on Monday evening, the party’s general-secretary Jahengir Badar ruled out the assassination of Mr Abbas as a sectarian incident and urged the government to take legal action against the culprits.

“We don’t believe that it was a sectarian incident. It is purely a case of target killing,” he said.

Condemning the police action against PPP workers during the funeral ceremony, Mr Badar alleged that the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal Secretary-General Maulana Fazlur Rehman was striking a deal with the assassinators and warned him against pushing the PPP to the wall.

“PPP will not let spoil the blood of Mr Abbas, who had rendered great sacrifices for democracy and upholding supremacy of the Constitution,” he said, adding that if the government failed to arrest the killers, the party’s protest would spread to the whole country.

He said that despite nominating persons in the FIR, police had yet not taken any action. On the contrary, he said, the police opened fire and baton charged the participants of the funeral prayers, wounding several of them.

Provincial PPP President Rahim Dad Khan and other leaders also attended the press conference.