ISLAMABAD: A fiery response to the latest US and Afghan charges against Pakistan’s main spy agency is expected to come from the National Assembly, which begins a new session on Monday.
It will be second time within a few days that politicians will likely come to the aid of the military establishment to defend it against accusations that the Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI) had aided or inspired operations of Afghanistan’s Taliban though Pakistan is a key US ally in the so-called war against terrorism.
On Thursday, almost the entire political leadership of the country and top brass joined hands at an all-party conference (APC) to reject allegations from the top US military official, Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Admiral Mike Mullen, that Taliban’s Haqqani network faction operating in eastern Afghanistan was a ‘veritable arm’ of the ISI.
As a firestorm provoked in Pakistan by the allegation seemed easing after President Barack Obama and some officials of his administration distanced themselves from the language used by Admiral Mullen in a testimony before a Congressional committee only days before his retirement, it was the government in neighbouring Afghanistan that dropped another bombshell.
Afghanistan’s intelligence agency said on Saturday it had handed Pakistan evidence that the Taliban leadership had plotted the recent assassination of former president and government peace envoy Burhanuddin Rabbani on Pakistani soil and that ISI had a role in the killing.The Afghan allegation, based on the claimed confession of a detained mastermind that Mr Rabbani’s Sept 20 killing by a suicide bomber in Kabul was plotted by Taliban leaders in Quetta, is most likely to fray tempers in the National Assembly.
Though very little was disclosed of what politicians and top military officials said about the American charges during the in camera APC convened by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, the expected tirades against both the American and Afghan allegations in the assembly will be fully known to public.
The last session of the National Assembly, convened on Sept 12 to discuss violence in Karachi and Balochistan, was abruptly adjourned on the opening day after about two hours’ proceedings to let lawmakers oversee relief work in their flood-hit constituencies, mainly in Sindh province.
But the early part of the session, which will begin at 4pm on Monday and is due to last until Oct 25, is likely to be dominated by new tensions with the United States and Afghanistan.
The opposition is expected to press for an early formation of a parliamentary committee to oversee the implementation of a 13-point resolution adopted by the Sept 29 APC as well as earlier parliamentary resolutions.
But Speaker Fehmida Mirza, who must finally name the parliamentary committee, will miss the opening of the session for the second time in a row as, according to an official press release quoted by APP, she left for a five-day official visit to Malaysia on Sunday.
She had left for Dubai before the National Assembly met on Sept 12, reportedly to collect relief for flood sufferers. But there were speculations that her absence could be linked to differences of her husband, former Sindh home minister Zulfikar Ali Mirza, with the leadership of the ruling Pakistan People’s Party over its efforts perceived to appease the Muttahida Qaumi Movement to bring the estranged Karachi-based party back into the government fold.
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