HYDERABAD, Jan 10: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam (JUI) leader Senator Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro has admitted that some differences of opinion does exist within Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal but JUI will try its best to keep the alliance intact.

Dr Soomro said while speaking at a reception hosted in his honour by local MMA leader Tariq Memon in Matiari on Tuesday that MMA chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed had issued statements about resigning from assemblies without taking the allies into confidence.The alliance would take part in general elections so as not to give a walkover to government parties, he said and added that the upcoming elections would not see Musharraf's enlightened parties and fundamentalists pitted against each other but it would prove to be a contest between pro and anti-America parties.

He accused the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) of siding with the government on the so-called women’s empowerment bill without taking the ARD into confidence.

The JUI leader rejected the government’s claim that sale of islands would make Sindh prosperous and create jobs for thousands of people. How could the province which received nothing at all from its 100 oil and gas wells would become prosperous after the sale of islands, he asked.

He said that the islands’ sale was in fact a part of ‘terrorists’ conspiracy’, which was aimed at creating another province after slicing the coastal belt from Karachi to Keti Bundar.

He said that in reality the step would render thousands of fishermen jobless and warned the rulers to keep their hands off Sindh's lands because its consequences would be disastrous.

NAZIM: District Nazim Kanwar Naveed Jamil has said that the district is free from sectarianism and people here have proved over the years they are above Shia-Sunni or other sectarian divides. He was speaking to a delegation of Shia Ulema Council, led by Nizamul Hyderi, at his office on Tuesday.