PESHAWAR, Sept 7: Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal Vice-president Maulana Samiul Haq has criticized the federal government for conducting military exercises in Bannu district near Afghanistan border.

He was speaking to a French mission delegation led by the council general, who called on him at his residence in Akora Khattak, said a press release issued here on Sunday.

The Maulana, who is also chief of his own faction of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI-S, told the team that the main purpose on the pretext of the exercises in the tribal belt was to monitor the ongoing fighting between the Taliban and US-led coalition forces.

On the one hand the government wanted to appease the Bush administration while on the other it exerted pressure on the MMA through the military movement in the home town of NWFP Chief Minister Akram Khan Durrani, he told the team.

The Bush government had a plan to meddle in the internal affairs of Pakistan and President Gen Pervez Musharraf, who wanted to remain in power, was toeing the US line, he alleged.

Appreciating the French and German governments decision for not sending their troops to Iraq, Maulana Samiul Haq said that situation would be normalized once the US and British forces pulled out of Iraq. Otherwise millions of US and Muslim countries forces together could not maintain peace in the oil-rich Arab country, he said.

He feared that next target of the US hegemonist designs was Pakistan and that was why the US had been trespassing in the tribal areas affairs in the name of an operation against Al Qaeda operatives.

The JUI-S chief denied the presence of Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters in the tribal areas and warned that such military exercises in the border area in future would create a new row between tribesmen and the federal government.