OKARA, May 20: Federal Defence Minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal is scheduled to hold a meeting here on Saturday (today) with a view to resolving the military farms’ land issue. Owned by the Punjab government, the land used by the army on lease has been a bone of contention between tenants and the farm management for the last five years. The tenants insist that their elders have been toiling the soil for a century now and, therefore, they deserve the ownership rights.

Reports said the minister and a group of tenants, led by Younis Iqbal Masih, the founder-chairman of his own faction of the AMP, would hold meeting at the former’s residence on the directions of President Pervez Musharraf..

The apparently three-point adenda relate to the provision of alternative residences with ownership rights and agricultural lands at Pippli Pehar tehsil of Deepalpur (Okara) and at Peerowal tehsil (Khanewal).

The tenants also demand that cases should be withdrawn against those who will accept the package.

Meanwhile, the administration hopes that implementation of the proposed package will help diffuse tension and the tenants will see better days ahead. In case the negotiations fail, however, an operation would start against the tenants against whom different cases have been registered.

On the other hand, the larger AMP group, led by its secretary-general Mehr Abdul Sattar, said in a press release the tenants would not accept any package other than that of the ownership of agricultural lands which they had been cultivating for a long time.

He also condemned the other group which was willing to sit on the negotiation table with the minister. He said they had nothing to do with the AMP movement.

On the Okara military farms, he said, Muslim and Christian tenants were united and the government was trying to separate them by offering package only to the Christian community.