April 11, 2008	Friday	Rabi-us-Sani 4, 1429

LAHORE, April 10: Office-bearers of sixty district bar associations of the country, including the Supreme Court and all the high court bars, will also resign if Barrister Aitzaz Ahsan refuses to withdraw his resignation.

This was stated by the SCBA Secretary Muhammad Amin Javed, Vice-President Ghulam Nabi Bhatti and other office-bearers at a join press conference at the Karachi Shuhada Hall of the Lahore High Court Bar Association on Thursday.

The SCBA office-bearers gave two days deadline to its president to take back the decision, stating otherwise they would also leave their respective offices. The secretary said the president had just announced leaving the office while the bar association rules required a written resignation.

Even if Mr Ahsan inked his resignation, the SCBA executive body, the authority to accept or reject it, would refuse to accept it, Javed added.

He condemned manhandling of former Sindh chief minister Arbab Ghulam Raheem and Dr Sher Afgan and lawyers in Mianwali. He declared the killing of innocent lawyers and people in Karachi a plan to sabotage the lawyers’ movement for the restoration of the deposed judges.

He accused President Pervez Musharraf of hatching a conspiracy against the newly-elected government after PML-Q's defeat.

Ghulam Nabi Bhatti condemned the alive burning of lawyers in Karachi and said that it had been done by the “terrorist organisation MQM”. He said the SCBA had recommended to the Punjab Bar Council to take stern action against the lawyers involved in the manhandling of Dr Sher Afgan.

Other SCBA office-bearers said Musharraf had engineered what they called state terrorism that led to the killings in Karachi. They added the PML-Q and MQM leadership had conspired with Musharraf to execute this `plan to stage carnage in Karachi’.convention: The Pakistan Bar Council (PBC) has deferred the All Pakistan Lawyers Convention, which was set to take place in Karachi on April 12, in protest against the killings in the capital city of Sindh.

In a press statement issued here on Thursday, the PBC said it was postponing the event on the recommendations of the Sindh High Court Bar Association. "The All Pakistan Lawyers Convention under the aegis of the PBC has been postponed till April 26 in protest against the brutal killing of lawyers and the worsening law and order in Karachi," the statement said. —Reporter