LAHORE, Oct 16: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam amir Maulana Fazlur Rahman on Tuesday questioned the justification for the military government’s decision to extend support to the United States in return for rescheduling of loans and financial assistance.

In a press statement issued here, the Maulana said the government should tell the people what the country had gained from supporting the US.

He said the assistance to be given to Pakistan for joining the war consisted of loans which it would have to repay like its other outstanding liabilities.

The JUI leader regretted that governments in several Islamic countries had started suppressing the people in the name of checking fundamentalism. He said Israel was killing the people of Palestine and Lebanon but the US was silent about it.

The US designs, he said, were manifest from the statement issued ahead of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s visit to the subcontinent. He said it had been stated that Mr Powell would ask Pakistan government to stop referring to militants in occupied Kashmir as Mujahideen.

The JUI chief said this amounted to withdrawal of even the moral support for the freedom movement in Kashmir.

He was critical of the human rights organizations which had failed to condemn extra-judicial arrests of a large number of Muslims in the US and elsewhere in the name of terrorism.