ISLAMABAD, Nov 25: Opposition will formally submit the terms of reference of the proposed parliamentary committee on earthquake relief and rehabilitation to the PM secretariat on Saturday.

This was disclosed by acting parliamentary leader of the Pakistan Muslim League-N Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan while speaking at a news conference here on Friday.

The acting PML-N parliamentary leader said that hopefully Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz would soon respond to the opposition-proposed ToR after his return to the country from Malta. He said the opposition was expecting that the government would respond to their proposals in one week after which opposition parties would discuss their future course of action.

Chaudhry Nisar said it would be wrong to call a meeting between opposition leaders and government representatives on Wednesday as the meeting of the parliamentary committee. He said that actually it was a meeting between the government and the opposition.

The PML-N leader said the opposition parties were united and so far they had taken all decisions unanimously. He said the opposition was ready to cooperate with the regime in its efforts to provide relief to the earthquake-hit people but it could not become a B-team of the government.

He said the opposition parties had decided not to make public the ToR as they did not want to provide a chance to the government to say that the opposition was politicizing the issue.

Chaudhry Nisar defended the decision of the opposition parties to boycott the donors’ conference. He termed the statement of Gen Musharraf that the opposition tried to sabotage the donors’ conference “irresponsible”. He said it seemed that Gen Musharraf had developed a habit of issuing baseless statements against the opposition. He asked Gen Musharraf to prove his statement that the opposition leaders had tried to damage the donors’ conference.

The PML-N leader also criticized Gen Musharraf’s remarks against opposition parties during the launching ceremony of the National Volunteers Movement. He said Gen Musharraf termed the opposition irresponsible at a time when its leaders were going to hold talks with the prime minister and his team.

Chaudhry Nisar said that when the opposition raised the issue in the meeting,

Prime Minister Aziz and PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain categorically denied that the president had said anything about the opposition. However, he said, all the newspapers reported the remarks the next day.

“At least, Gen Musharraf should have shown some respect to his hand-picked prime minister,” he added.

He said the opposition was not saying that the army should be pulled out from relief activities. They were demanding instead that the army should not have the decision-making powers.

It may be mentioned that while speaking at a press conference after attending a meeting of the parliamentary leaders on November 23, the opposition leaders had rejected the proposed ToR presented by the prime minister and announced that they would finalize their own.

PML-N information secretary Siddiqul Farooque, former provincial minister Raja Ashfaq Sarwar and president of the party’s Islamabad chapter Tariq Chaudhry were also present on the occasion.