ISLAMABAD, March 8: President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday called the newly elected Senate to meet on Wednesday for its inaugural session where opposition parties have threatened to create a furore to protest against the sweeping presidential powers.

A brief notification issued by the Senate secretariat said the 100-seat upper house had been summoned to meet in parliament house at 9am on Wednesday.

Senate members must take the oath at the inaugural session. But opposition parties said on Friday their more than 40 senators-elect would not take oath under the constitution which has been amended by the Legal Framework Order.

The notification did not say who would preside over the inaugural session of the Senate which was elected last month.

No official word was available whether the Senate secretariat would follow the precedent of the National Assembly’s inaugural session which was presided over by its last speaker Ilahi Bakhsh Soomro. Mr Soomro had lost the contest for a NA seat in Oct 10 general elections.

But the last Senate chairman, Wasim Sajjad, has been elected to the new Senate and he himself is supposed to take oath on Wednesday. The inaugural session will be followed by another session to elect the upper house chairman and a deputy chairman, for which no date has yet been set.

The ruling coalition, led by the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, has a thin majority in the Senate.

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, parliamentary leader of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal and chief of Jamaat-i-Islami, said on Friday the opposition members of the Senate would not take oath under the amended constitution.

Political sources said the opposition senators would come to the session but would announce their refusal to take oath inside the house.