ISLAMABAD, Feb 2: Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani went to great lengths in the National Assembly on Wednesday to ease sceptics’ mistrust about his government’s stance over the controversial blasphemy law that he said nobody wanted to change and a deadly shootout in Lahore involving a US mission employee.

Despite repeated government assurances that it has no plan to amend the blasphemy law decreed by former military dictator Gen Ziaul Haq in the 1980s, an alliance of religious parties has been threatening to continue agitating over the issue unless the prime minister makes a pledge on the floor of parliament.

And Mr Gilani did exactly the clerics’ bidding — although similar assurances had come earlier from him outside parliament and from his ministers inside parliament — by telling the lower house: “We are all unanimous that nobody wants to change this law.”

“Neither the government has formed any committee, nor the speaker, to consider amending this law,” he said to cheers from both the treasury and opposition benches, in a reference to unconfirmed media reports about the presumed existence of such a body.

Opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had earlier urged the prime minister in a speech to give such an assurance and clarify the government’s position on the case of last Thursday’s shooting in which an employee of the US consulate-general in Lahore, Raymond Davis, had allegedly shot dead two Pakistani motorcyclists he says were pursuing his car to attack him on a road in the Punjab province capital, while a third Pakistani man was run over and killed by another vehicle at the same place.

The prime minister spoke very briefly about the Lahore incident on the grounds that the case of the arrested American was sub judice and assured the house that the government would abide by whatever is decided by courts of law and do nothing that could harm national prestige.

But over blasphemy issue, one member of Chaudhry Nisar’s PML-N, Sahibzada Mohammad Fazl-i-Karim, who is also a religious figure, still had his doubts, saying a “confusion” would remain until the prime minister also denied a media report that President Asif Ali Zardari had formed a committee to review the disputed law.

The prime minister had left the house by then and nobody else from the treasury rose to respond to the PML-N backbencher, but Interior Minister Rehman Malik had earlier in the day denied in the Senate that the president had formed a review committee.

Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, who was chairing the lower house at the time, said he thought the prime minister’s clarification had left “no ambiguity” about the issue, which was picked up by religious parties on the basis of a proposed private bill of a PPP member, former informer information Sherry Rehman, which she says is aimed to prevent the widely complained misuse of the blasphemy law mainly against members of non-Muslim minorities and is also linked to the Jan 4 assassination of then Punjab governor Salman Taseer in Islamabad.

Mr Gilani said Ms Rehman’s bill, which was never put on the lower house agenda, did not mean it was a PPP policy and informed the house that his former minister had “agreed with me” when he told her she should have raised the matter in the party before proposing her bill, which Ch Nisar earlier suggested she should withdraw in the interest of her own party and peace in the country.

Stressing that “there can be no two opinions over (protecting) Namoos-i-Riasalat (honour of the holy prophet – PBUH), the prime minister renewed what he called an invitation he extended to ulema of all schools of thought in an overnight live question-answer television programme to “come and tell us how to prevent misuse” of the blasphemy law.

Chaudhry Nisar picked up the Lahore incident for a stinging criticism of the government, particularly for what he saw as a failure of the interior minister to place facts before the house about he said had become an “insulting” situation, and, citing media reports, voiced his concern over what he called “foreign powers infiltrating streets and houses in Islamabad” with unidentified foreigners taking accommodation without an explanation whether they were diplomats or military personnel.

“Who are these people driving around in vehicles with tinted glasses and fake number plates?” he asked, apparently referring to presumed presence of American personnel which he said could develop into a “big crisis” and incidents like the one that happened in Lahore.

“Nobody should be allowed to roam about in this fashion,” he said and added: “Which country in the world allows people to move with unlicenced weapons?”

The opposition leader accused the federal government of putting “the entire burden” on his party’s Punjab government vis-à-vis the Thursday shooting case and telling the US mission here that the provincial authorities were a hurdle in granting diplomatic immunity to the arrested American although the federal government was ready to do it.

“I ask the government there should be transparency in their style of governance,” he said.

The house later adopted a bill, based on a Musharraf-era presidential ordinance and already passed by the Senate, to give legal validity to the existing Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority. But it deferred another bill, also based on a similar ordinance to regulate the National Defence University in Islamabad, after its second reading for further consideration by a house standing committee concerned in deference to some PML-N members’ objection to a clause seeking a blanket backdated validation of the university’s actions.

TALES OF OWN WOES: But the fag end of the over three hours’ sitting, before the house was adjourned until 10am on Thursday, was marked by some members’ emotional tales of their own woes regarding their perks after one of them, PML-Q’s Kashmala Tariq, complained of what she called a sudden withdrawal of entitlement of the parents of parliament members to medical treatment at government expense.

PML-N Khawaja Mohammad Asif called it a “big discrimination” compared with the civil and military bureaucracy and, in the heat of argument, ridiculed some media reports citing expenses incurred on a minister or an MP without giving a comparison with others and, in an apparent counter-move, went on to cite an unspecified planeload of journalists going to Saudi Arabia for a free Haj and the Islamabad Club setting exorbitant entry fees for MPs and others compared to much less charged from government officials.

Speaker Fehmida Mirza came out strongly to reject what she saw as an “unnecessary” focus on the expenses of parliament members in Pakistan who, she said, were the most low-paid lawmakers in the world and called for removal of perceived discrimination in the club fees.

PPP chief whip and Labour and Manpower Minister Syed Khurshid Shah too backed what turned out to be a common cause of house members and suggested the house committee on privileges examine the question of medical facilities for MPs’ parents.