ISLAMABAD, Dec 13: While the government appeared hesitant in the National Assembly on Friday to condemn the execution of an opposition leader in Bangladesh for helping Pakistan Army in the 1971 war there, Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan issued a strong statement of his own later denouncing the act as “most regrettable and painful”.

The Thursday night’s hanging of Abdul Quader Mollah of Bangladesh Jamaat-i-Islami following a conviction for disputed war crimes echoed in the National Assembly when the parliamentary leader of Pakistani Jamaat-i-Islami, Sahibzada Tariqullah, demanded the house pass a condemnatory resolution and adjourn for the day in memory of the executed politician.

Inter-Provincial Coordination Minister Riaz Hussain Pirzada sought, and got, time from Speaker Sardar Ayaz Sadiq until Monday to seek the opinion of the foreign ministry and other parties in the house about the execution.

Before the hanging took place, a foreign ministry spokesman told a news briefing on Thursday that while it was not Pakistan’s policy to interfere in the affairs of other countries, “we have noted that different international human rights organisations have expressed concern over the way the (war crime) trials have been conducted” in Bangladesh.

Opposition Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf president Javed Hashmi regretted that there was no foreign minister — a portfolio held by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif — to respond to the members’ concern in the house as he spoke in an inconclusive debate on law and order in the country. But other members who spoke in the debate avoided touching the subject,

Chaudhry Nisar, who was not present in the house, said in his statement that there was no doubt Mr Mollah was hanged for his “loyalty and solidarity with Pakistan in 1971”.

Norms of international relations, Islamic solidarity and wisdom, he said, would have “required putting events of the past behind to begin a new era”. But, he added, with “this most regrettable incident, an effort has been made to reopen old wounds”.

Stressing what he called the need to follow a strategy to forgive one another for larger national interest, the interior minister said it would have been better if Bangladesh government had “shown large-heartedness and magnanimity” instead of digging up the past.