HYDERABAD, Oct 22: Awami Tehrik chief Rasool Bux Palijo has said former president Gen Ziaul Haq’s policies had engendered terrorism and the nation was now “reaping the harvest sown by him”.

He said the Karachi blasts had been aimed at gaining a pretext for banning processions and public meetings.

Mr Palijo told journalists after presiding over a meeting of the party’s central committee at his Qasimabad residence on Sunday that the Supreme Court of Pakistan should order probe into the assets of generals to find out how much wealth they had accumulated during Afghan Jehad as well as in the so-called war on terror.

He said that imperialist forces did not want the country to march on the path of democracy. All the Pakistani rulers had been American puppets and Ms Benazir Bhutto would prove to be no exception, he remarked.

He accused Gen Ziaul Haq of producing home-grown terrorists and said “we are reaping what Zia had sowed.” Pakistan was faced with the worst crisis of its history which was deepening with each passing day, he said adding that the rulers themselves had admitted that the country faced dangers from all sides.

The fact that the imperialist forces entrapped the country immediately after the demise of Quaid-i-Azam had led to national, cultural, social and political contradictions, he said.

Mr Palijo said that since its inception Pakistan’s affairs were never conducted in a balanced and democratic manner and the federating units were never given equal representation in the government.

The military and civil bureaucracy belonging to only one province had always stuck to power creating a sense of deprivation among smaller provinces, he complained.

He said that his party believed that if status quo was not changed it would lead the country to anarchy. It was high time the rulers shunned the policies forced upon them by foreign countries, he stressed.

Mr Palijo suggested that a new constituent assembly should be elected on the basis of 1940 Resolution to guarantee rights of all the provinces. The party’s central committee declared in several resolutions adopted by the meeting that the Karachi bomb blasts were aimed at terrorising the democratic opposition and banning election campaign, which was nevertheless going to prove a complete fraud.

It said that free and fair elections conceivable in a tribal-feudal military occupied backward colony were never tolerated and the only way out was that the democratic forces of the country should refuse to be hoodwinked by terrorists.