March 27, 2008	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 18, 1429

ISLAMABAD, March 26: Jamaat-i-Islami’s parliamentary leader in the Senate Professor Khurshid Ahmed has expressed his concern over what he has termed an aggressive US lobbying in Pakistan to get a fresh lease of life for its failed policies of terrorising people and the country in the name of war on terror.

In a statement, Senator Ahmed described the ongoing visit by two top US diplomats as an effort to continue with the game which US President George W. Bush and President Pervez Musharraf had already lost.

He said he was satisfied with the independent position taken by PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif after meeting with US Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte and Assistant Secretary of State Richard Boucher that the future policy would be formulated by parliament and not under the dictates of Washington.

The country, he said, had suffered because of Mr Musharraf’s surrender to the commands to Washington.

He expressed the hope that Prime Minister Gilani would adopt an independent and courageous policy in keeping with the wishes of the people of Pakistan.

The JI leader, however, regretted that the PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari had gone to the US embassy to meet the US officials as against the PML-N delegation which keeping in view the dignity of the people of Pakistan met the US officials at the Punjab House.