ISLAMABAD, Sept 5: Pakistan People's Party Chairperson Benazir Bhutto has said the sacrifices laid down by armed forces Jawans and officers for the country could never be forgotten.

In a statement issued here by PPP media cell on the occasion of Defence Day, Ms Bhutto said PPP governments had worked strenuously to give Pakistan an invincible defence. She said the defence of the territorial integrity of the country was the foremost responsibility of the armed forces.

The former premier said the PPP made a distinction between armed forces and ruling generals who had seized power from time to time. She said her party believed that professional armed forces, enjoying a non-controversial status backed by their people, were needed to secure Pakistan's territorial integrity and independence.

She recalled that Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had given Pakistan a nuclear umbrella and that the party governments in the nineties and eighties had given the country nuclear missile delivery systems.

Additionally, the PPP governments had built the Ormara naval port, the Kamra Aeronautical Complex, turned the Wah Ordnance Factory into a major supplier of armed forces' needs and modernised the army, navy and the air force with the most modern technology.

She said while it was the need of the country to have strong armed forces, it was also the need of the nation to have a good government that could provide internal stability with a solid foreign policy framework to ensure the solidarity and integrity of the country.

Democracy is needed to keep the armed forces professional and independent of public controversies that arose from governance issues, she said.