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ISLAMABAD, Dec 15: A day after President Pervez Musharraf escaped an attempt on his life, the government told the Senate on Monday it would not be deterred from fighting terrorism by such bombing that was condemned by both the treasury and opposition benches in the upper house.
While opposition Senators accused security agencies of lapses in maintaining law and order across the country, the ruling coalition members voiced relief that no harm was done to the president by five explosives devices that a government minister said were set off under a bridge in Rawalpindi on Sunday evening immediately after the presidential motorcade passed over it.
The two sides put aside their bitterness over the president’s controversial Legal Framework Order (LFO) for the second consecutive sitting as they voiced their concern on Sunday’s blast after paying tribute to Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance chief and their upper house colleague Maulana Shah Ahmad Noorani who died of a heart attack on Thursday.
This was the second day of mourning in the Senate for Maulana Noorani after the upper house had adjourned on Friday without conducting any business after passing a resolution of tributes to the departed leader.
On behalf of the government, Leader of House Wasim Sajjad called the attack work of terrorists opposing the president’s vision of a liberal and progressive Pakistan but said “Pakistan will not be deterred from this path”.
“This was not an attack against the president but against the state of Pakistan...to destabilise the country,” he said, adding that the government fully understood the “severity” of the situation.
Mr Sajjad said the president had very ably led the country in recent years while Pakistan won several diplomatic victories that earned it prestige as a respectable and frontline state in the fight against terrorism.
“The president envisages a liberal and progressive Pakistan and it is this vision that is challenged by terrorists,” he said.
EXPERT’S WORK: Earlier, Information and Broadcasting Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed called the bombing the doing of a “most expert” person who, he said, had planted five explosive devices that reportedly went off seven seconds after the president had driven over the bridge on his way to his nearby Army House residence in Rawalpindi on return from a visit to Karachi.
“Only a terrorist could do this to create a crisis for the country by taking the life of President Musharraf...at a time when Pakistan is organising Saarc (South Asian Association from Regional Cooperation) summit conference and the Indonesian President (Megawati Sukarnoputri) is here,” said the minister who came to the house after attending a cabinet meeting that condemned the incident.
In an obvious reference to the expected visit to Islamabad by Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the minister said: “The coming time is so important for the region that people from both sides will have to sit together (to settle their problems).”
Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri called the bombing an “act to destroy Pakistan’s image” the country had gained through its present policies, including its role in the international war against terrorism.
He said there was no need to find any “justification” for the incident, the like of which had also happened when in Lahore in 1999 when a bridge was blown up immediately after then prime minister Nawaz Sharif had driven over it.
The minister was apparently replying to opposition PML-N Senator and former finance minister Ishaq Dar who said the government should find out whether it was simply an act of terrorism or also reaction against what he called President Musharraf’s “anti-Muslim policies” and the “u-turn” in Afghanistan.
Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat remained in the house for some time but an expected statement from him did not come after Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali told the cabinet meeting that only the information minister would act as spokesman on the issue, although in consultation with the interior minister.
While most opposition Senators, including those from the People’s Party Parliamentarians, the MMA and smaller regional parties, rejected resort to violence as a means of settling political differences, those on the treasury benches said the country could face a chaos without President Musharraf.
“Just imagine chaos and instability (that would have happened) if the perpetrators of the act had succeeded,” ruling PML-Q’s Senator Javed Ashraf, a former railways minister and an ex-chief of Inter-Services Intelligence, said. “God protected Pakistan and the president,” he added. He said such an incident would have shattered many other people’s nerves but the president “has shown he is man of strong nerves and has kept his cool”.
Independent Senator Waqar Ahmad from the North West Frontier Province also said the president was “a man of steel nerves” and would not be deterred by what he called such a cowardly act.
