LAHORE, Oct 1: The Lahore High Court office on Wednesday rejected a petition on technical grounds in which the petitioner had claimed that the government had decided in principle to send troops to Iraq and it should be restrained from doing so.

It remarked that petitioner-lawyer M. D. Tahir had based his petition on a news item and had not appended any official order to his petition. The petition could not be marked for regular hearing unless the official decision (if made) had been presented to the office in the form of an order or a notification, it added.

The petitioner had claimed that as per the news item appearing in an Urdu language newspaper, US Gen Richard Head had praised the skill of Pakistani troops saying the US would like to benefit from such skill in Iraq. In response to this compliment, the government had made up its mind to send troops to Iraq to assist the US forces.

The petitioner had feared that if the troops were sent to Iraq, they would definitely be used for genocide of Muslims which was not permissible in Islam and under the 1973 Constitution. All the peace loving nations had raised voice against the invasion of Iraq by the US-led forces and deployment of Pakistani troops there would isolate the country from the Muslim world.

He submitted that the US had made a plan to save further loss of its soldiers in Iraq and had decided to field the forces of other countries, including Pakistan, to counter the attacks by the Iraqi forces.

Mr Tahir submitted that his earlier petition had not been fixed for hearing and he was left with no other option but to challenge the proposed sending of troops to Iraq.

Since all the policies and decisions of the government were based on the public interest, a referendum under the supervision of Supreme Court judges on this issue was necessary, he contended while seeking an alternative remedy.