April 01, 2008	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 23, 1429

KARACHI, March 31: National Assembly Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza has said she does not want to get involved in any conflict with President Pervez Musharraf and her priority is to run the regular business of the house in accordance with the Constitution and the rules.

“We are concerned about the regular business of parliament and we do not want to get involved in conflict,” she said in a cautious response to a question regarding the future of President Pervez Musharraf.

Dr Fehmida Mirza talked to journalists after paying a visit to Mazar-i-Quaid and later at a luncheon hosted in her honour by Pakistan People’s Party leader Nafis Siddiqui on Monday.

It was her first visit to Karachi after being elected the first woman speaker of the national assembly in the country’s history.

Shedding lights on “the fate of the National Security Council and Article 58-2b of the Constitution” which empowers the president to dissolve the national assembly, Dr Mirza said all such matters would be decided by members of the treasury and opposition benches in parliament.

Likewise, she said, the issue of restoration of deposed judges of the superior judiciary would be decided by parliament in the light of a resolution to be tabled in the lower house.

Terming the 100-day action plan unveiled by Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani a national charter, she observed that implementation of the programme would improve the lives of the masses.

She felt that the country was at a critical juncture and it could be steered out of the present crisis through political and economic stability for which she said all political parties ought to work together.

She made it clear that as the custodian of the house it was her top priority to make parliament supreme. For this purpose, she said, she would like to take along all political parties. “We want to strengthen democratic institutions so that they can work within their constitutional parameters,” she added.

When asked about the release of political prisoners, she replied: “Let parliament get strong and they will be freed.”

She described the establishment of a true democratic government in the country as an outcome of a long struggle of her party’s slain chairperson Benazir Bhutto and the people of Pakistan.

Every dictator, she said, had dismissed elected governments and parliament for his nefarious designs in the past but now all political forces wanted a change in the system so that it might not be possible for anyone to derail democracy.

She said that the government would demand a UN probe into the assassination of Ms Bhutto once a resolution in this regard was passed in the house.

Earlier, accompanied by National Assembly deputy speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, she laid a floral wreath at the mausoleum and offered Fateha.