ISLAMABAD: The government told the Senate on Monday it would write to the Pope and Interpol for action against an American pastor over the burning of the holy Quran before the upper house unanimously passed a resolution calling upon the United States to bring the controversial preacher to justice.
Interior Minister Rehman Malik informed the house after a fiery debate at the start of a new session that he was addressing the letters to Pope Benedict XVI and Interpol Secretary-General Ronald Nobel on the directive of President Asif Ali Zardari, who had himself called for UN action over the March 21 incident in his address to a joint sitting of parliament on March 22.
The letter to the Interpol chief, he said, would demand that international police treat the matter as case of “criminal violence” and take measures to guard against any future desecration or blasphemy.
The Senate resolution, which Leader of the House Nayyar Hussain Bokhari said was agreed to by all parliamentary groups, strongly condemned the incident and called upon the United States to take legal action against pastor Terry Jones, who oversaw the burning of the Quran at a church in Florida.
It also urged all Muslim countries to convey their outrage to the United States and asked the United Nations to take notice of what it called “heinous act”.
Some two dozen senators from all parties spoke on the issue, some of them calling for a proactive role by Pakistan like proposing a special summit of the Organisation of Islamic Conference, and some others, particularly those from religious parties, holding the US government responsible for allowing this act to take place.
Half-hearted silence for Bhatti
Before the furious debate, in which most senators seemed keen to excel one another in condemning the desecration of the holy Quran, it was with some apparent half-heartedness that the house observed a minute’s silence to mourn the March 2 assassination of then minorities affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti.
A mood of hesitation from the chair to both the treasury and opposition benches descended on the house after ruling PPP’s Senator Khatu Mal Jeewan proposed that session start with a minute’s silence for Mr Bhatti, a Christian, who was shot dead by unknown gunmen near his mother’s home in Islamabad, apparently for his views against the alleged misuse of a blasphemy law against the members of the country’s non-Muslim minority communities.
A controversial remark from a young religious enthusiast and senator from the Federally Administered Tribal Areas, Hafiz Rashid Ahmed, who said such a gesture would be “against the Sharia” seemed to put all sides in a quandary on whether to support or oppose the proposal.
House Chairman Farooq H. Naek, instead of taking a decision, asked for advice from opposition leader Wasim Sajjad of the PML-Q, who, in turn, seemed to ignore the issue and suggested that the house start its first private members’ day with points of order.
On a second query, Mr Sajjad again deflected from the issue and pressed that the house take up private bills on agenda despite the absence of Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan and other ministers because of a cabinet meeting that was in progress at the time.
The leader of the house, being alone on the treasury benches in the absence of the ministers, also did not seem keen to press Mr Jeewan’s proposal, though finally he did endorse it, upon which the chair ordered a minute’s silence.
Nobody questioned the Fata senator’s view except Senator Abdul Rahim Mandokhel of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party who, while speaking on the burning of the Quran, regretted the silence of his colleagues over this outburst.
Before the house was adjourned until 10am on Tuesday, Inter-Provincial Coordination Minister Raza Rabbani, who also chairs a parliamentary commission on the implementation of the Eighteenth Amendment, said the cabinet meeting on the day had approved transfer of five federal ministries to provinces in the second phase of devolution and assured it that the process would be completed by the due date of June 30.
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