MULTAN, July 7: A local court has summoned the Anti-Narcotics Force prosecutor for July 16 on the application of alleged international trafficker Mushtaq Malik alias Black Prince.

Imprisoned Black Prince accused stated in his application submitted with Additional District and Sessions Judge Imam Ali Shah that the ANF personnel had been harassing him to withdraw his statement, which he had moved to a court in Lahore through his counsel Habibullah Shakir in a narcotic smuggling case.

Asif Zardari is among the accused in the case under trial with the court of AD&SJ Mian Khadim Husain at Kot Lakhpat Jail in Lahore. The ANF had presented Black Prince as a prosecution witness on June 14, 2002, against Mr Zardari on the basis of a statement which he had given in 1997 while serving a nine-year term in a US prison.

He returned home in June 2001 and was later arrested by the ANF's Multan chapter in November on the alleged recovery of 5,500kg of hashish from him and his accomplices - Mian Idrees, Pervez Malik, Ahsan, Rauf, Noor Islam and Ahmad Radowala.

He claimed that some officials of the Ehtesab Bureau visited him in the US prison and intimidated him to give statement against Mr Zardari. He said he had retracted his statement against Mr Zardari on May 22, 2002, through an affidavit.

RESOLUTION: As many as 18 members of the Punjab Assembly, who belong to the districts that once came under the jurisdiction of former Multan and Dera Ghazi Khan divisions, have requested the chief minister to remove the BZU's vice-chancellor.