August 16, 2007	Thursday	Sha’aban 2, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Aug 15: Opposition lawmakers in the Senate urged the government on Wednesday to admit having failed in maintaining law and order and resign.

They said that because of the poor state of law and order, Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had to hold the national flag-hoisting ceremony on the Independence Day inside a building and President Gen Pervez Musharraf hosted a reception at which only serving and retired military officers were invited.

Hoisting the national flag in a room of the Convention Centre, instead of performing the ceremony outside the Parliament House, was a disrespect for the flag, Leader of the Opposition Raza Rabbani said during a debate on law and order.

More painful, he said, was that due to security fears the Independence Day reception hosted by the president was restricted to serving and retired military officers, instead of prominent personalities of the civil society. The government, he said, must accept its failure to maintain law and order so that an interim government of national consensus could be set up.

Liaquat Bangulzai of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal recalled that when in 1984 Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was advised to hold the flag-hoisting ceremony in a restricted area, she said: “It will be a great honour to die for the honour of India.”

The issue of Lal Masjid operation was also raised during the debate and Minister for Parliamentary affairs Dr Sher Afgan Niazi admitted the failure of the interior ministry and intelligence agencies to stop supply of arms to the Lal Masjid-Jamia Hafsa complex.

However, he rejected Prof Khurshid’s remarks that the operation was unconstitutional, illegal and immoral. He said that after the failure of efforts to resolve the issue peacefully there was a consensus among the civil society and the media that action should be taken to settle the matter.

He said it was undoubtedly a lapse on the part of security agencies to allow administrators of the two religious institutions to become so strong as to declare war on the state and challenge the writ of the government. However, it was also a fact that the government had tried through ulema and senior politicians to settle the issue peacefully. He said the leadership of Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa had damaged the cause of Islam.

The minister also conceded that the government had failed to assess repercussions of the Afghan war as jehadis trained and armed by the West had changed the very culture of religious institutions. Besides, it was also an accepted fact that the 9/11 incident was a Jewish conspiracy to pit Muslims against the West.

MMA’s Maulana Gul Nasib said the Lal Masjid operation was part of the international agenda to isolate and eliminate Islamic organisations and institutions and weaken Islam and the Muslim world.

He claimed that ‘hidden forces’ had systematically patronised the administrators of the two institutions in order to alienate religio-political forces and force them to take up arms. He said he feared that the matter would not stop there and in the next phase of the plan, Maulana Abdul Aziz would be presented as a national hero and would be used against the religio-political forces.

He claimed that peaceful ways to resolve the issue had been deliberately ignored at the behest of certain forces; otherwise Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa elements who had created law and order situation could have easily been held by security agencies and tried in the court. He said he had met the two cleric brothers and got an impression that they had been trapped by some elements in the establishment.

He urged the government to repair Jamia Hafsa and hand it over along with Jamia Faridia to Wafaqul Madaris. He also called for reappointing Maulana Abdul Aziz as Khatib of Lal Masjid to end the standoff between religious forces and the administration.

Earlier, the minister for law presented in the house four ordinances – National Vocational and Technical Education Commission Ordinance 2007, Trade Development Authority of Pakistan Ordinance 2007, Recognition and Enforcement (Arbitration Agreements and Foreign Arbitral Awards) Ordinance 2007 and National Database and Registration Authority (Amendment) Ordinance 2007 (Ordinance No. XXVI of 2007).