ISLAMABAD, Nov 9: The National Assembly meets on Friday to begin a new session under a pall of gloom and anger over civilian and military massacres that may blow up in the house with challenges to the government's role in the so-called war on terrorism. The session, called for 10 days, will conclude the present assembly's fourth parliamentary year and begin the last year of its five-year term.

Friday's sitting, beginning at 5pm, will be brief as the house will be adjourned early to mourn the recent deaths of former president Ghulam Ishaq Khan and house member Abdus Sattar Afghani of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal.

But proceedings after a two-day weekend recess are likely to be stormy with opposition-sought debates on the Oct 30 missile strike on a madressah in Bajaur tribal area that killed 82 people and Wednesday's apparently tit-for-tat suicide bomb attack at an army parade ground at Dargai where at least 42 troops were killed.

A controversial women's rights bill is due to be on the top of the government's legislative agenda for the session, but some supporters of the bill have voiced fears that conservatives in the ruling party might try to use opposition-sought debates on other issues to delay it further.

The MMA and the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) have already filed adjournment motions with the lower house secretariat seeking a debate on the Bajaur strike, which the government claims killed only militants, contrary to most opposition versions that rockets fired from a pilotless drone killed religious pupils and their teachers.

An ARD spokesman said another adjournment motion for a debate on the Dargai bombing -- the most devastating attack of the kind on the Pakistani army claimed by a previously unknown militant group -- would be filed on Friday.

While the government blames what it calls extremist religious groups for encouraging terrorism and having links with Al Qaeda and Afghanistan's Taliban guerillas, opposition demands for a change of the government's policies as an ally of US-led war on terrorism are likely to gain momentum after the Tuesday's defeat of US President George Bush's Republican party in mid-term Congressional elections.

Fireworks are also expected during an opposition-sought debates on President Pervez Musharraf's recently published memoirs, "In the Line of Fire", particularly over his controversial observations about detained nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and the 1999 conflict with India in Kashmir's Kargil area, and a nationwide power breakdown on Sept 24.

If taken up in the present session, the Protection of Women (Criminal Laws Amendment) Bill, which could not be passed in the last session of the house that ended on Sept 18 mainly because of an MMA threat to resign from the house, is likely to meet renewed opposition from religious groups inside and outside the house.

The bill seeks to protect women from the widely complained misuse of the controversial Hudood ordinances regarding zina (adultery and rape) and qazf (false accusation of zina) enforced in the 1979 by then military ruler Gen Mohammad Zia-ul-Haq.

However, there remains a question-mark on whether the government will press for the passage of the draft approved by a special house select committee that was boycotted by the MMA but included the People's Party Parliamentarians (PPP) -- the major mainstream opposition party -- or allow amendments to accommodate the MMA, which opposes any changes in the Hudood laws, saying the draft seeks to change punishments ordained by God.

Although the PML-led ruling coalition had a comfortable majority of its own to pass the bill and also had the rare support of the PPP on this issue, the legislation was put off by a sudden prorogation of the house in September President Musharraf was on a visit to the United States and PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain seemed keen to appease religious groups.

But after his return from his foreign tour, the president, who had originally proposed the legislation, has been telling the coalition leadership to get the bill passed, in which case the MMA has threatened to create a political crisis with the resignation of all its 65 members in the 342-seat house.

Ahmed Hassan adds: The National Assembly will take up the Protection of Women’s Rights bill on Wednesday, sources said on Thursday.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Dr Sher Afghan Khan Niazi told newsmen that the bill will be the same which was approved by the select committee of the lower house in the previous session.