ISLAMABAD, June 3: President Pervez Musharraf came under intense flak from his critics on Tuesday during a noisy debate in National Assembly over a deadly US missile strike in the Bajaur tribal area last month, most of them calling for his ouster from office and some for his trial for alleged wrongdoings as head of the government and the military.

Some low-level but determined defence for the president came from two members of the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) who accused the ruling coalition of suffering from “Musharraf-phobia” or being “Musharraf-eccentric”, provoking noisy protests and “go Musharraf, go” slogans from the other side.

Most speakers in the inconclusive debate, which will be resumed on Wednesday, blamed President Musharraf’s policies for missile strikes in the Federal Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) by US and Nato forces fighting Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and urged the new coalition government to make amends and compensate the families of people killed in the border region.

The debate, over the mid-May drone strike in the Damadola village of the Bajaur Agency that killed more than 20 people, was sought though an adjournment motion moved on Monday by house members from Fata. Their group leader Munir Khan Orakzai said the government should not be content with lodging protests with the US-led coalition forces in Afghanistan but also warn them of and order its own troops deployed in the area to shoot down the intruding aircraft.

The Fata members mostly called for reviewing the policy in the region in consultation with them while some members from the coalition partners — Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), Awami National Party and Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam — attacked the policies of President Musharraf and the previous government of his loyalists.

The house plunged into a commotion after PML NWFP chapter president and former minister Amir Muqam asked unspecified “some people” in the coalition to get themselves “treated for Musharraf-phobia they are suffering from” and defended the president’s post 9/11 policies that he said had protected Pakistan’s nuclear assets and saved it from suffering the fate of Afghanistan and Iran.

But Mr Muqam’s eulogy was met with a strong denunciation by PML-N’s Ahsan Iqbal of the president’s conduct since his seizure of power in an Oct 12, 1999 coup to the present-day economic, power and political crises and a call for his trial.

Another pro-president speech by PML back-bencher Marvi Memon, who complained of a section of the house being “extremely Musharraf-eccentric”, provoked cries of “shame, shame” and “go Musharraf, go” from the treasury benches — mainly from the PML-N.

Some PML members stood up apparently to walk out in protest against interruptions from the treasury benches but stayed on after PPP chief whip and Labour and Manpower Minister Khurshid Ahmed Shah and PML-N’s Tehmina Daultana calmed down their protesters.

But Mrs Daultana too came in for some heckling from the opposition when she delivered a bitter attack on what she called “a dictator hiding in the Army House” and said “he will not be allowed to run away”.

But the severest attack against the president came earlier from the only PPP speaker in the debate, the elderly former Balochistan chief minister Taj Mohammad Jamali, for military operations in the tribal areas and Balochistan, but a key threatening remark by him was made unprintable after being expunged from the record of the proceedings by Speaker Dr Fehmida Mirza.