LAHORE, June 30: Lawyers prepare themselves for a countrywide agitation against the appointment of Mr Shaukat Aziz as future prime minister. A meeting of the Lawyers Joint Action Committee is being convened the next week to seek a mandate for a nation wide protest against Mr Aziz who, Lahore High Court Bar Association president Ahmad Awais, understands will endanger the country's economy and put the national interests at stake.

"We think he (Mr Aziz) is like a liquidator who is being appointed as prime minister to accomplish a task which will be highly harmful", Mr Awais told reporters here on Wednesday.

He said Mr Shaukat Aziz had a clear American agenda to accomplish and his economic policies so far were the manifestation of his designs. He said Mr Aziz seemed interested in the IMF and the World Bank more than the national economy.

The bar president also condemned the "not-so-invisible-forces" which, he said, had inflicted a severe blow on the country's fragile democratic system by removing Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali through "coercive tactics". He was of the view that the resignation of Mr Jamali was obtained at gunpoint as the rulers were not prepared to even allow the weakest of dissent.

NATO: Meanwhile, the LHC bar is to consider on Thursday a resolution which seeks of the National Assembly not to approve Pakistan's status as a non-NATO United States ally, conferred on June 17, without soliciting public opinion.