ISLAMABAD, March 3: Three opposition leaders were unanimous on Friday in declining an invitation from the President’s House to attend a state banquet for US President George W. Bush on Saturday.

Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly and secretary-general of the MMA Maulana Fazlur Rahman, chairman of the ARD and PPP Parliamentarians’ president Makhdoom Amin Fahim and chairman of the PML (Nawaz group) Raja Zafarul Haq were reported to have been invited to the state banquet but they decided to boycott it on different grounds.

They consulted each other and other leaders of opposition and said that they deemed it against political ethics to attend the dinner since the US president approved of General Pervez Musharraf’s form of democracy in Pakistan.

They admitted that Pakistan needed to maintain friendly relations with the US but expressed reservations against the policies of the Bush administration of targeting Muslims the world over.

After the three leaders conveyed their decision to the quarters concerned, Raja Zafarul Haq told reporters: “Despite our wish to maintain good relations between peoples of Pakistan and the United States, we strongly oppose the Bush administration’s policies towards the Muslims”.

He said: “We resent the US administration’s onslaught against the Muslim people all over the world, including Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran, besides its poor human rights record at the Guantanamo Bay (detention centre and) in the Abu Ghuraib prison (in Iraq) and its policies towards Kashmir, Palestine and elsewhere.”