ISLAMABAD, Oct 23: People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) leader MNA Raja Pervez Ashraf has said the railway minister, Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, should give an account of the land he got himself allocated in Rawalpindi in the name of Kashmir jihad before accusing Benazir Bhutto of wrongdoings in the UN oil for food programme.

In a statement issued here on Monday in response to the allegations levelled by the railway minister, the MNA said every time Ms Bhutto and Mian Nawaz Sharif met and reaffirmed their commitment to democracy, the proteges of military dictators restored to character assassination of the PPP chairperson in a farcical media trial.

Mr Ashraf recalled that the allegations had been levelled in April last also when Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif made initial contacts to restore democracy. The regime however went silent when the PPP gave a befitting rebuttal to the accusations of wrongdoings, he added.

In the mid of May when the two former premiers again met in London and signed the “death warrants of dictatorship”, the National Accountability Bureau (NAB) filed a case in a local court in Islamabad accusing Ms Bhutto of mis-declaring assets before the Chief Election Commissioner in 1998 that had not even been questioned by the election commission.

He said on June 2 when Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif met in Dubai, the regime went into a tailspin and, abusing judicial process, yet again issued arrest warrants of Ms Bhutto and his husband Asif Ali Zardari.

Soon after the Dubai meeting, Ms Bhutto in a interview with a private TV channel exposed the junta and rejected compromise on the terms of dictators. Within a day of the interview the regime planted reports of filing yet another reference to deter the PPP chairperson.

In the wake of the October 19 meeting in London between the two former prime ministers, Sheikh Rashid has regurgitated the same allegations, Mr Ashraf said.

Mr Rashid, however, forgot to remember that actually three companies brought oil for the Pakistan regime from Iraq under the oil for food programme worth $500 million and paid over $4 million in surcharge to the Saddam regime. If Sheikh Rashid had remembered it he would not have regurgitated the charade that was only bound to embarrass the regime, he added.