ISLAMABAD, April 8: National Assembly Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain said on Thursday veils worn by some women members of the lower house were a security problem and sought a religious advice to tackle it.

During a discussion in the house on whether women should have their pictures on their national identity cards, he said it was difficult for security staff of the Parliament House to ascertain identities of veiled women members.

"We are facing difficulty in this respect," he said as he sought advice from Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri, a member of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA), which has 13 women members in the 342-seat National Assembly.

Maulana Haideri said that despite religious inhibitions, it was a compulsion for Pakistan's Muslim women to affix their photographs on their passports because otherwise they would not be able to travel abroad, even for the Haj.

But he said it was not necessary to have women's pictures on their identity cards. An MMA woman member from the North West Frontier Province, Mrs Jameela Ahmad, said all women members of her alliance had gone through an identity check by the parliament security staff some days ago.

All MMA women members have told the security staff that they can be identified from a green file each of them would be carrying, she said as she showed one such a folder to the Speaker to reassure him. But the Speaker seemed unimpressed and said: "Such a file can be carried by anybody." There was no indication what he planned to do in a situation when security has been tightened in parliament and other important public buildings in recent months to guard against feared terrorist attacks.

Among more than 70 women members in the National Assembly, only 13 of the MMA wear veils, which are different from the traditional head-to-toe burqa and cover their faces, showing only their eyes.