SUKKUR, April 6: Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal acting president Qazi Hussain Ahmad has said that the Wana operation is being carried out under the US pressure. He said this while speaking at a public meeting at the town hall in Jacobabad on Tuesday. The meeting was held in connection with the mass contact campaign of the MMA.

Mr Ahmad said that Pakistan Army is being used against its own people in Wana. He said that Kashmiri freedom fighters were being named as terrorists and alleged that the rulers wanted to resolve the issue according to the wishes of India.

He said that the struggle for resolution of the Kashmir issue would continue. The Jamaat-i-Islami Ameer said that under conspiracies against religious institutions, students of the institutions, which he said were the basis of Islam, were blamed for terrorism. He said that these institutions produced religious scholars and not terrorists.

He said that the MMA opposed the National Security Council as it was against the Constitution. Speaking on the occasion, MMA secretary-general Maulana Fazalur Rehman said that by allowing the US to operate from Pakistani air bases, the independence of the country had been put at stake.

He said that though the rulers were working on the dictates of the US, people were against the US. He claimed that 58,000 attacks were carried out from the Pakistani land against Afghanistan.

The Maulana said that agents of RAW were working in Afghanistan on the behest of the US. He said that the Constitution had been made disputed and the future of the country was in danger due to policies of President Gen Pervez Musharraf.

The MMA secretary-general warned the US to desist from anti- Islam policies. He said that during his recent visit to the UK and other European countries he had asked people not to support the US.

Sahibzada Abul Khair, Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro, Dr Mumtaz Memon, Syed Aziz Ahmad Shah Amroti, Dr A. G. Ansari and others also spoke on the occasion. Earlier, the MMA leaders were accorded a warm welcome by a large number of people when they arrived in Jacobabad in a convoy from Thul.

PROTEST: A procession was taken out by the Hindu Panchayat here the other day to protest against occupation of a plot of the Panchayat at the behest of a federal minister.