ISLAMABAD, Aug 16: The treasury and opposition benches in the National Assembly joined voices on Monday to express their concern and 'horror' at renewed fighting in Najaf and called for peace in the Iraqi holy city.
In a unanimously passed resolution, the lower house expressed it 'grave concern' over the situation in Najaf where hundreds of people have been reported killed in an offensive by US and Iraqi forces seeking to oust the Mehdi Army militia of Shia leader Moqtada Sadr.
Voicing the assembly's 'horror' at the fighting around the mausoleum of Hazrat Ali in Najaf, the resolution called upon "all parties to respect the sanctity of the holy shrine and play their role in restoring peace and tranquillity in the holy city".
But the resolution, which Foreign Minister Khurshid Mahmood Kasuri had got drafted in consultation with opposition parties, did not blame any side for the Najaf crisis.
The move for a joint resolution came from Mir Hazar Khan Bijarani of the People's Party Parliamentarians (PPP) at the start of the house sitting in the evening and was welcomed by Mr Kasuri who promised to have a joint resolution drafted in consultation with all parties.
On the second sitting of the current session marked by both peace and anger between the ruling and opposition parties, the National Assembly also saw a token walkout by opposition parties who sought to defeat a feared government plan to bulldoze a controversial new defamation law and press speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain to call jailed Pakistan Muslim League-N acting president Javed Hashmi to the house.
But the house unanimously passed a government bill seeking to amend the Civil Procedure Code (CPC) to remove an anomaly about notifying the amount or value of the subject matter in a suit before a small causes court for the purposes of a second appeal.
While the government denied it intended to bring the defamation bill in Monday's sitting, it also promised to come with a reply in the next couple of days about the opposition demand that the speaker issue a production order for Mr Hashmi, who was arrested last October and later convicted of sedition and attempting to provoke a mutiny.
APPARENT GESTURES: In what looked like a gesture to the opposition contrary to a hard line taken in the past, Minister of State for Parliamentary Affairs Mohammad Raza Hayat Hiraj asked for some time to consult his colleagues about Mr Hashmi's issue, which has been hanging fire for the past about 10 months.
In another apparent little gesture, Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat promised to call a report from the Islamabad administration about a case registered against PPP's Nayyar Hussain Bokhari, who said his privilege as a member of the house had been breached by what he called a "totally false" charge.
The speaker deferred a fresh privilege motion moved by Mr Bokhari - after a previous one had lapsed without action - and asked the interior minister to come with a report from the authorities concerned within this month.