NA skips anti-US move for now

[Lahore_Real_Estate]

ISLAMABAD: On a day the CIA chief was in Islamabad, the National Assembly on Thursday skipped a promised opposition-sought debate on anti-militant Nato strikes inside Pakistani tribal areas, which would surely have been marked by anti-US outbursts.

A government minister had agreed to have a two-hour debate on Thursday after the opposition PML-N pressed for an early discussion on its adjournment motion when it was admitted in the house on Wednesday.

But the motion was not put on the day’s agenda without any explanation in the house and the PML-N, some of whose members blasted the United States with relish a day earlier during a debate on American court’s sentence of 86 years’ imprisonment for Pakistan-born neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, raised no objection against the omission.

It was not immediately clear whether a behind-the-scenes understanding between the government and the opposition as a possible gesture at a time when the director of US Central Intelligence Agency, Leon Panetta, was here for talks with Pakistani authorities centred on the so-called war on terror or other pending business of the house kept PML-N motion out of Thurday’s agenda.

Leader of Opposition Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan of the PML-N, who had called for an early debate and hailed the cross-party support for his party’s move as a “good tradition” on Wednesday, did not come to the house on Thursday, which PPP chief whip Khurshid Ahmed Shah had said on the previous day would be acceptable to the government for the debate on last week’s two helicopter strikes into the Federally Administered Tribal Areas (Fata) by Nato forces in Afghanistan.

Nobody responded to a Fata member’s report in the house about another Nato helicopter strike on Thursday, which a military spokesman later said killed three and wounded as many troops of the paramilitary Frontier Corps in the Kurrram tribal area.

It remained uncertain if the motion would be taken up even on Friday -- when the house will meet at 10am and may not have enough time left for a two-hour debate after the question hour because it must adjourn before the Friday prayers – and if not, the matter must wait until the next sitting on Monday after a two-day weekend.

OPPOSTION ON RELIEF COMMITTEES

Despite Thursday’s suspicious omission, the government appeared to be in an opposition-appeasement mood and agreed to associate opposition parties with flood relief committees in the provinces after an opposition party staged a protest walkout with two of its members complaining of discrimination in relief distribution in two provinces.

PPP chief whip Khurshid Shah, who is also the minister for labour and manpower, said he agreed with the PML-Q’s demand to associate opposition members with the relief committees in all the four provinces because “that will facilitate our work”.

The minister promised to talk to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani – who had arrived in the house during the walkout but had left by then -- to get it done, after persuading PML-Q members to end their protest with the party president of its Khyber Pakhtunkhwa chapter, Amir Muqam, threatening another walkout if “assurances given to us” did not materialise.

Mr Muqam led his party members out of the house protesting against what he called discriminatory attitude shown to flood-affected people in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Sindh provinces, after one of his party members from Sindh, Ayaz Shirazi, made a similar complaint about his home district of Thatta and lamented that nobody listened to the prime minister in his PPP-ruled province.

BILL ON KARACHI COLLEGE

Earlier, the house passed, without a debate, a long-pending bill, based on a Mushrraf-era ordinance of 2007, to grant a degree-awarding status to Dawood College of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, with a new provision to create the post of a pro-chancellor to be held by the federal education minister who would act as a stand-in in the absence of the chancellor -- who must be president of Pakistan – with powers to order inquiries into the conduct of authorities of the college and recommend action against violations.

The 45-clause Degree Awarding Status to Dawood College of Engineering and Technology, Karachi, Bill was taken up after Education Minister Sardar Aseff Ahmad Ali pressed for its immediate adoption for the second time in as many days in view of possible harm by further delay to the students of the 48-year-old institution.

The original 2007 ordinance, which granted the degree-awarding status to the college on the recommendation of the Higher Education Commission in view of what a statement of objects and reasons accompanying the bill called “serious problems of affiliation with an engineering university” and the resulting “great hardship” to its graduates, became invalid following a Supreme Court decision of July 31, 2009, that nullified the Nov 3, 2007, emergency proclamation of then president Pervez Musharraf and its protection to many of his decrees.