MMA for NA session on foreign policy

Published January 6, 2003

LAHORE, Jan 5: Terming Gen Pervez Musharraf’s foreign policy a failure, the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal has urged the need for convening a session of the National Assembly to drastically change it keeping in view the new world scenario.

MMA central leader Liaquat Baloch warned the government that the six-party religious alliance would not tolerate the US hegemony and activities of its forces in Pakistan.

Speaking at an election meeting of MMA nominee for PP-142 Ziauddin Ansari here on Sunday, he demanded that Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan should give proof of representing the masses by not following the wrong policies.

He warned the prime minister that operations of foreign agencies in the country would result in the increased hatred against his government.

He said the MMA’s success in the Jan 15 bypolls would be a show of hatred against the United States’ policies.

Mr Baloch also met jeweller Muhammad Asghar who had been enlisted by the US among the five wanted suspects. The jeweller told him that the publishing of his photograph in newspapers, investigation by various agencies and US president Bush’s statement had shocked him and his relatives besides badly damaging his business.

Meanwhile, Jamaat-i-Islami deputy secretary-general MNA Farid Piracha has said that Washington’s statement on bombing of the Pakistani area by US planes is a victory of public protest. However, he said that this clarification by the US was not solution to the actual problem.

He said the sense of insecurity among the masses would not end until the US forces were occupying military bases and the FBI was conducting raids in the country.

He also urged the US administration to listen to the voice of its own scholars and intellectuals and change its policy.