PESHAWAR, Jan 3: Central leader Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl Maulana Fazlur Rehman on Tuesday warned that the toppling of the government would be dangerous but said there would be no harm if politicians agreed to the schedule of early general elections following the Constitution. Speaking at the Peshawar Press Club’s ‘Meet the Press’ programme, Mr Fazl said the country was going through the worst crisis of its history and that parliament’s joint resolutions were completely ignored by the authorities unwilling to accept the power of the elected representatives.

He said the so-called war on terrorism had claimed many lives, including those of security and law-enforcement personnel and caused $70 billion loss to the national economy. He regretted that the country received four billion dollars worth of donation only from foreign agencies and states.

The JUI-F leader said the government had no permanent foreign policy and worked on foreign dictation and that it never took the loss of public life and property in the anti-terror war seriously harming national interests.

He said actions like the blocking of Nato supplies, vacation of Shamsi Airbase by the US and boycott of the Bonn Conference were the offshoot of the foreign attack on military checkposts in Mohmand Agency but they all seemed to be temporary.

He said the national security committee had prepared a plan six months ago but the government wasn’t interested in implementing it.

“It is the duty of the government to show all documents pertaining to agreements signed with the US in 2001,” he said. Mr Fazl, however, said of late, foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar told the national security committee that there existed no record of such agreements.

He said Pakistan’s 2001 decision to follow the international powers’ dictation brought the nation into disrepute.

The JUI chief said Pakistan had become a sandwich as the US was using its forces from outside while it was already facing internal instability for multiple reasons.

“It is extremely shameful that Pakistan has no effective foreign policy and the government is blindly following imported policies which have brought the country on the verge of destruction.

“Had the government a permanent and stable foreign policy, it would have never opted to let thousands of Pakistanis in the meaningless war for a meagre amount of four billion dollars,” he said, adding that the money showed that every Pakistani had a share of just two dollars for the losses suffered by them over the last nine years.

Mr Fazl said his party had an open policy and believed that talks with the relevant stakeholders were the only solution to the anti-terror war. He said the US had entered Afghanistan only for three months with the claim to gain its objective but it failed to defeat the Taliban even over the last 10 years.

“We are talking about foreign policy and war on terror and the government has failed even to overcome the internal issues like price hike, loadshedding and joblessness,” he said and added that all national institutions like PIA, Pakistan Steel Mills and Pakistan Railways were on the verge of collapse but the government was least interested in taking pragmatic steps for solution to the issues.

The JUI-F leader criticised Awami National Party for falsely claiming to be following Bacha Khan’s non-violence philosophy and blamed the killing of innocent people in military operation on it.

“If ANP thinks these killings war against terrorism, then what it says about 1974 military action in Balochistan and the 1971 war of Bangladesh?”

Mr Fazl also criticised the establishment over its political role and said it had begun playing another political game by creating a party through turncoats. He warned that there would no political stability until the faulty system was changed and role of establishment ended.

He also came hard of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf and said not a single political movement had called itself a tsunami and that political movements were based on some ideology, not mere slogans.

The JUI-F leader said Jamaat-i-Islami had demanded around 50 per cent seats in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa as a precondition for the restoration of Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and that was unjust.