QUETTA, July 24: Jamaat-i-Islami's secretary-general Munawwar Hasan has said that the MMA's unconditional support to ARD candidates in by-polls against the PML nominee would pave the way for the one-point agenda of uniting the combined opposition parties to struggle for parliament's supremacy and democracy.

The MMA leader was speaking at the local press club on Saturday.

The JI leader said that President Gen Pervez Musharraf's real intentions on the uniform issue would be known in October when senior generals' retirements and promotions would be finalized, adding that the president would either quit as chief of the army staff or continue in violation of the 11th constitutional amendment.

Munawwar Hasan said that the alliance would launch a public protest campaign if President Musharraf deviated from the accord, between the government and MMA, and remained COAS after Dec 31.

The JI leader condemned the Muttihada Qaumi Movement and accused the Sindh governor of using the governor's house as headquarter for carrying out, what he termed, terrorist acts to subjugate political opponents.

Criticizing the president's decision to appoint MQM's nominee as Sindh's governor, he said that it had only been done to keep the PML government intact, adding that the move had created problems for the people of Karachi.

He said that Karachi would remain in the grip of lawlessness until MQM's governor was removed and the appointment of an impartial person in his place, adding that the People's Party Parliamentarians should be allowed to form government in Sindh as it was the largest single parliamentary group in the Sindh Assembly.

Accusing Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz of giving top priority to IMF's agenda, he said that finance minister Shaukat Aziz had presented five federal budgets since 2000 and during these five years, the incidence of poverty had increased from 26 per cent to 38 per cent, adding that no capital was invested by foreign financiers.