October 27, 2007	Saturday	Shawwal 14, 1428

GUJRAT, Oct 26: Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi says Benazir Bhutto considers herself as substitute for President Musharraf and wants to impose American agenda on the nation, but the people under the PML banner will not let her become the prime minister and fulfil the foreign agenda.

He was speaking to a public gathering here on Friday. It was Pervaiz Elahi’s last visit to his constituency PP-110 as chief minister amid strict security arrangements with deployment of over 1,300 policemen in and around the venue.

MNA Wajahat Husain and District Nazim Shafaat Husain were also present on the occasion.

“When we started reconciliation talks with the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), we thought that Ms Bhutto will talk on matters of national security, political stability, future of democracy, uplift of the poor and prosperity of the country, but she preferred only one-point agenda, demanding amnesty from the corruption cases pending against her in courts.”

The chief minister said on the one hand Benazir was talking of reconciliation, but on the other hand she was levelling murder charges against PML leaders.

He said though he felt grieved over the Karachi carnage of Oct 18, but he was unable to understand why Ms Bhutto was consistently demanding that its probe be conducted by foreign agencies.

“I ask her when Murtaza Bhutto, her brother, was gunned down during the PPP’s second regime then why she didn’t call foreign experts to probe the murder then?”

Pervaiz Elahi said he or his family never promoted or adopted the politics of avenging, and said a former federal minister of the PPP government had got registered a false murder case against him in 1996.

He said Ms Bhutto had given Rs2 million to the complainant woman to pursue the case against him vigorously, but the complainant had exonerated him in the high court, which spoiled Ms Bhutto’s dreams.

He said the same former federal minister was building markets and plazas in Gujrat city. “We have never created hurdles for out political rival,” he maintained.

“Ms Bhutto has accused the Punjab government of misusing the uplift funds, but we have provided free treatment, free education, electricity, gas, schools, hospitals and lot of other basic amenities to the people without any discrimination because of which they will cast votes to the PML whereas the PPP will be washed out in the upcoming general elections,” the chief minister said.

He said the people would never let anybody to make the Prime Minister’s House a ‘den of plunderers’.

“We consider Dr Abdul Qadeer as hero of the nation whereas Benazir says the crime committed by Dr Qadeer cannot be forgiven,” he said

Former district naib nazim Syed Noorul Hasan Shah, MPA Aamir Usman Raza, former MPA Mian Tariq Mahmood and Chaudhry Tufail also spoke on the occasion.

Earlier, the chief minister inaugurated Gujrat-Sargodha dual carriageway’s first phase, which has been completed at the cost of Rs600 million.