BANNU, Sept 6: Jamaat-i-Islami Naib Amir Senator Prof Mohammad Ibrahim has said that President Pervez Musharraf is bound to take off his military uniform by Dec 31 this year.

Speaking at a Press conference here on Monday, he said serious problems would crop up if the president did not abide by the agreement reached with religious parties on the uniform issue.

Prof Ibrahim said some elements who had advised the president against taking off the uniform were encouraging the the president to violate the constitution. The elements were misleading the president on constitutional matters only to gain personal benefits, he said.

The Jamaat leader said that Muslims throughout the world were facing numerous problems due to their pro-West leadership and disunity among their ranks. The Muslim governments in the world were apparently free but all decisions were being taken at the behest of the American government, he observed.

He claimed that all decisions taken by the Musharraf government were dictated by the Americans as the ruling clique had no popular support among the masses. He said the present cabinet was the biggest in the history of the country. He said inclusion of more than a hundred federal and state ministers, advisers and chairmen of standing committees was a burden on the public exchequer.

The Jamaat leader alleged that the Speaker had played a partisan role by not issuing production orders for opposition leader Javed Hashmi, which had made the election of the prime minister doubtful.

He asserted that Muttahidda Majlis-i-Amal had not violated its part of the agreement reached with the government. He claimed that voting for the president was not part of the agreement and the MMA still stood by its "principled decisions." Only the presence of members in the National Assembly was made part of the agreement and "our members were present," he said.

He said the government had not held talks with the MMA on tabling the National Security Council bill in the National Assembly. Even the Treasury Benches had been kept in the dark about the bill, he claimed, adding that it was against parliamentary traditions.

Mr Ibrahim said that the Jamaat-i-Islami was planning holding a conference in Lahore in which scholars and leaders from various countries of the world would be invited. During the conference, the scholars would discuss problems facing the Muslim Ummah across the world, he said.

He said the Frontier government was not a weak government like the governments of Ms Benazir Bhutto and Mr Nawaz Sharif. If anybody tried to dislodge the MMA government through conspiracies, the federal government would also have to bear the brunt, he said.