KARACHI, July 22: The Pakistan Peoples Party on Thursday took strong exception to the alleged insinuation made by the Nisar Memon Committee on Water that there was a ministerial agreement in 1994 to apportion water between the provinces on "historical use" basis.

In a statement, Mr Taj Haider, central information secretary of the PPP claimed that the Nisar Memon's Committee, which had itself been constituted in violation of the rules of the Senate and National Assembly, had referred to this "imaginary" agreement only to malign the government of Ms Benazir Bhutto.

It was his contention that in the 2nd May 1994 inter- provincial meeting held to "review current water situation", Punjab had circulated a working paper on the need to adopt the "historical use" formula. This paper was not even discussed in the meeting since it was in violation of the Water Accord and was not even on the agenda, Mr Haider claimed.

The government of Sindh immediately demanded that minutes of the said meeting be corrected. These were not only corrected, but communicated by the Federal Ministry of Water and Power as: "The only valid document for sharing the surpluses and shortages is therefore, the Water Accord 1991, signed by all the provinces and ratified by the CCI". This was part of the official record and is available to the Nisar Memon committee or to anyone else.

These are stark facts that any committee, even if it was allegedly "illegally" constituted Nisar Memon Committee, should not fail to note.

Any fair minded person or committee would fix the responsibility on persons, who had knowingly distorted the accord, and also put on record the amount of water, unconstitutionally deducted from the share of the suffering provinces over this period of six years, he emphasised.