ISLAMABAD, May 19: The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) on Thursday backed the call of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) for observing a countrywide protest day on May 27 against the desecration of Holy Quran by the US troops in Guantanamo Bay, but said any decision to physically participate in it would be taken after consultation with other ARD parties.

Speaking at a news conference along with the party’s secretary-general Iqbal Zafar Jhagra and information secretary Siddiqul Farooque, PML-N Chairman Raja Zafarul Haq regretted that the government of Pakistan had not raised the issue with the US effectively and forcefully. He was of the view that the matter should be investigated independently and on the forum of the Organization of the Islamic Countries.

Mr Haq opposed any move by the Pakistan government to recognize Israel, saying: “It will be a foolish step and injure the sentiments of the people of Pakistan.”

The PML-N leader criticized Gen Pervez Musharraf’s remarks that former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif would have no role in the country’s politics even after 2007. He said there was no democracy in the country which was evident from a report appeared in the April issue of the US Journal of Democracy.

He said according to the US Journal of Democracy, Pakistan ranked even below Afghanistan in terms of civil liberty and political rights.

Mr Haq also quoted some extracts from the US journal which stated that Gen Musharraf had actually strengthened the Islamists in the country after removing the democratic government of Nawaz Sharif in October 1999.

“The PML’s success was one of the things that led the Pakistan’s military to stage its 1999 coup aimed at, among other things, stopping Muslim democracy. The upshot, tellingly, has been that the seat share of Islamist parties in the parliament has risen sharply from its negligible 1997 level of less than one per cent to 20 per cent in 2002. By removing the Nawaz Sharif government and with it the Muslim democracy, Gen Musharraf has strengthened the Islamists, whether he meant to or not,” Mr Haq read out from the report.

Iqbal Zafar Jhagra announced that the PML-N would organize a national Kashmir conference on May 23 in Islamabad, in which some 50 political parties and other organizations from Pakistan and Azad Kashmir would participate.