ISLAMABAD, Oct 20: With no sign yet of an end to the country’s prevailing constitutional crisis, opposition parties in the National Assembly carried on their noisy protest against the Legal Framework Order (LFO) on Monday, vowing not to turn back in their campaign for parliamentary supremacy.

Opposition members walked out of the lower house after about five minutes of desk-thumping and chanting of slogans against President Pervez Musharraf and the LFO, leaving the treasury benches to finish the brief agenda without any interruption in about 45 minutes.

“Go Musharraf go” and “No LFO no”, the opposition members chanted as soon as Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain ordered the start of the question-hour after the house met in the evening after a two-day recess.

While the proceedings inside the house remained dull, the opposition created a stir outside, claiming its members had received identical letters from unidentified army personnel, calling for the appointment of a national inquiry commission to investigate army generals’ role in the Kargil operation and the army takeover in 1999 and the start of US-led military campaign in Afghanistan in October 2001.

Photocopies of the unsigned letter in Urdu were distributed at a news conference where spokesmen for the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal said their anti-LFO campaign would continue until it achieved success.

“We will not turn back,” ARD President Makhdoom Javed Hashmi said before releasing the copies of the alleged letter, whose veracity could not be confirmed from any independent source.

MMA spokesman Liaquat Baloch called Gen Musharraf “the biggest hurdle” in the way of resolving the crisis that had paralysed parliament for about a year.

He said last week the alliance had received verbal messages from Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali that he wanted to resume the dialogue process to settle differences over the contentious points of the LFO regarding the sweeping powers assumed by the president and the question of when he would give up his office of the chief of the army staff.

However, no dialogue has take place even a week after the reported contact by two of the prime minister’s emissaries with the MMA.

The prime minister is scheduled to leave for Iran on Tuesday for a three-day visit, and there are also hints that the talks over the LFO could not resume until PML-Q President Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, now in Germany for medical treatment, returns home.

It was not immediately clear whether the government would like to continue the current National Assembly session through the month of Ramazan, which is likely to begin from October 28, and remain under pressure of opposition protests in the house or adjourn it before that without completing 130 mandatory sittings of a parliamentary year.

The government assured the opposition-less house on Monday that procedures for hiring houses for government employees and payment of accommodation rents would be streamlined.

The issue was raised through a call-attention notice by PML-Q’s Basit Bokhari and Akram Masih Gill, who complained of hardships caused to government employees in the hiring of houses for them and delay in issuance of rent cheques by the estates offices in Rawalpindi and Islamabad.

Water and Power Minister Aftab Sherpao, speaking on behalf of Housing and Works Minister Syed Safwanullah — who was not present in the house — acknowledged problems caused by what he called lengthy procedures.

But he said the government was trying its best to streamline the procedures.

Communications Minister Ahmed Ali introduced the Gwadar Port Authority (Amendment) Bill aimed to amend the existing Gwadar Port Authority Ordinance, 2002, before the speaker adjourned the house until 10am on Tuesday. Details of amendments sought were not immediately available.