ISLAMABAD, March 26: Opposition parties in the Senate said on Wednesday they would seek passage of a resolution against the US-led war on Iraq when the upper house met for a special session on Thursday.

A spokesmen for the opposition parties said the combined opposition would seek cooperation from treasury benches for adopting a joint resolution though a lot of mistrust existed between the two sides after the government countered a similar move in the National Assembly last week.

Thursday’s Senate session will be the latest in what has become a parliamentary hide-and-seek between the government and the opposition parties mainly over the issue of the Iraq war and row over the presidential powers.

The opposition parties accuse the government of avoiding both the issues through premature adjournments of National Assembly and Senate sessions. The government denies the charge.

While the devastating US-British air and ground attacks on Iraq will dominate the Senate session, opposition parties will also use the occasion to agitate against the sweeping powers conferred on President Pervez Musharraf through the Legal Framework Order.

The ruling coalition led by PML-Q and the opposition parties, including the MMA and the PPP, have called separate meetings of their senators for Thursday to finalize their line of action before the Senate session begins at 5pm.

The session was summoned by Senate Chairman Mohammedmian Soomro on Saturday in response to a joint requisition filed by the opposition parties on March 15 to discuss the Iraq war and the LFO.

The session will also offer an opportunity to Mr Soomro to win trust of the opposition parties which accuse him of securing his new office with the help of intelligence agencies.

An MMA parliamentary leader, Liaquat Baloch, was expected to meet PML-Q leader Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain on Wednesday evening to try to seek government’s cooperation to adopt a joint resolution in the Senate on Iraq, a spokesman for Jamaat-i-Islami, Shahid Shamsi, said.

He told Dawn the MMA would take a final decision about the proposed resolution in its parliamentary party meeting on Thursday morning.

A PPP spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, accused the government of ditching the opposition by forcing an abrupt prorogation of the opposition-requisitioned session of the National Assembly in the midst of a debate on Iraq on March 19 after a ruling coalition member pointed out lack of quorum in the house.

But Mr Shamsi said the opposition would take care not to provide a similar excuse to the government to prorogue the Senate session without completing the business for which it had been requisitioned.

A PML-Q spokesman, Azeem Chaudhry, said the ruling coalition would act in the national interest but could not take a stance on the proposed resolution without first seeing its text.

“We will do whatever required in the national interest,” he told Dawn and said a decision in this regard would be taken by party leadership.