ISLAMABAD: Half a day after security forces wiped out a deadly terrorist attack at Karachi airport, the federal government came under fire in parliament on Monday, with some top opposition lawmakers demanding a tough action against Taliban rebels and blaming Interior Minister Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan over perceived security lapse.

General debates on the new budget were suspended to discuss the overnight attack at the Karachi international airport, which was claimed by Taliban rebels, and suicide attacks and gunfire on two hotels in Taftan border town of Balochistan on Sunday night that killed 23 Shia pilgrims returning from Iran.

While Leader of Opposition in the National Assembly Khursheed Ahmed Shah called the Karachi attack “a national security disaster” to which, he said, the interior minister reacted very late, the PPP’s parliamentary leader in the Senate, Mian Raza Rabbani, demanded that both the minister and the aviation adviser, Shujaat Aziz, accept their “responsibility” and resign from their offices.

However, an independent Senate member from Balochistan, Humyun Khan Mandokhel, said the “primary responsibility” for the airport attack fell on the Sindh government for failing to check infiltration of the attackers into the airport area and demanded resignations from Chief Minister Qaim Ali Shah as well as from heads of the Civil Aviation, Airport Security Force and the provincial police.

Opposition lawmakers demand tough action against Taliban

Opening the debate in the lower house, Khursheed Shah demanded that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif “take the nation into confidence” about the fate of stalled peace talks with the Taliban and said it was now time to take a “decision” to “fight like lions rather than run away like jackals”.

But former interior minister Rehman Malik, who saw the Karachi attack as part of what he called anti-Pakistan “Indian doctrine”, was more emphatic in calling upon the prime minister to launch a “sweeping operation” against the Taliban’s bastion in North Waziristan as, he said, the PPP government did to end Taliban’s sway in Swat Valley in 2009.

Neither the prime minister nor the interior minister came to either house of parliament. Two government ministers told the National Assembly that Chaudhry Nisar had to fly to Karachi for an on-the-spot assessment of the situation and that he was expected to make a statement before the house on Tuesday.

Kashmir Affairs Minister Chaudhry Birjees Tahir, responding to criticism in the National Assembly, said the interior minister had gone to Karachi to examine possible “security lapses”, prompting a charge from Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf vice-chairman Shah Mahmood Qureshi that the statement amounted to an admission of responsibility.

States and Frontier Regions Minister Abdul Qadir Baloch said all political parties and institutions must realise the situation which the country could face as a consequence of political changes in its neighbourhood and join hands in what he called “Pakistan’s national war”.

Published in Dawn, June 10th, 2014