KARACHI: Karachi will boycott the 19th National Football Championship scheduled to begin at Comilla from Dec 31. This was decided at the Working Committee meeting of the Divisional Football Association, Karachi, which met yesterday morning, under the chairmanship of Mr M.V. Orakzai, D.I.G Police, Karachi, who is also the Vice-Chairman of the DFA.

After the meeting, the DFA Secretary, Mr Pir Bux Baluch, said that “the decision to boycott the forthcoming championship was taken on persistent demands and growing resentment among the local football circles against the National Selection Committee’s biased attitude towards Karachi players”.

[Meanwhile, as reported by an agency in Cairo,] A joint communique issued after the three-man “little summit” in Tripoli reaffirmed today [Dec 27] that “the responsibility of facing up to Israeli aggression is shared by all Arab countries without exception,” it was learned here tonight.

The communique said that the “little summit”, attended by Presidents Nasser of UAR, Nimeiry of the Sudan and, Gaddafi of Libya, had created “an Arab Revolutionary Front” and a “new axis of armed struggle against Israel stretching from Tripoli to Khartoum by way of Cairo”. The communique said the three Heads of State would meet, regularly every four months. The three Presidents had also decided to form Coordi­nation Committees in their respective countries, it said.

Published in Dawn, December 28th, 2019