ISLAMABAD, Feb 26: The National Assembly opened its first regular session on Wednesday more than four months after its election, setting the stage for resumption of parliamentary law-making following three years of military interruption.

The session — after it elects 12 members of the 100-seat Senate on Thursday — is also likely to be marked by stormy debates on issues ranging from a possible war against Iraq and the controversial constitutional amendments decreed by President Pervez Musharraf.

No legislative business was brought before Wednesday’s opening sitting that was devoted mainly to the new assembly’s first question hour, a brief discussion on the Feb 20 plane crash that killed PAF chief Air Chief Marshal Mushaf Ali Mir, his wife and 15 PAF personnel, and a prayer for them and victims of recent incidents of violence and rains.

Parliamentary sources said that legislation would be taken up after Thursday’s Senate elections.

The 342-seat assembly will elect four senators from the Islamabad capital territory, while 12 Fata MNAs will elect eight senators from their northwestern tribal agencies.

All eyes were set on Wednesday for seven Fata MNAs that the ruling PML-Q says have been held hostage by the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal government in the NWFP for four days to make sure they vote for pro-MMA senate candidates.

But the seven men did not turn up as tensions on the affairs seemed to be mounting between the PML-Q and the MMA.

“Why will they come today?” an MMA source remarked about the hiding MNAs. “They will come tomorrow (for the vote),” he said. He denied that the MMA was detaining the seven men whose vote would be crucial in the Senate polls.

“According to our information they have been made hostage by the MMA for four days,” PML-Q secretary-general Salim Saifullah said on Wednesday.

“I would rather say they are being held under detention,” he told a private television channel, saying this would harm democracy.

However, nobody raised this issue in the brief National Assembly sitting, which seemed often unmanageable by deputy speaker Sardar Yaqub Khan who presided over the session in place of speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain who was away as acting president while President Musharraf was yet to return from the Non-Aligned Movement summit in Kuala Lumpur.

The PML-Q seeks a majority in the Senate to ensure a smooth passage of legislative bills in both houses of parliament and election of its own upper house chairman, who becomes acting president in the absence of the president.

The assembly members sat in alphabetical order on Wednesday as they did in the previous brief sittings held for oath-taking and election of Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali in November and to give him a vote of confidence on Dec 30.

The sources said separate seating arrangement would be made for the treasury and the opposition members after the completion of the Senate election.