Security breach: PML-N reiterates demand for independent commission

Military advised to devise tougher selection criteria.

ISLAMABAD:

Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) demanded the formation of an independent commission to investigate the Abbottabad incursion at the earliest and asked that it be entrusted with the inquiry of the terrorist attack on Mehran Base, Karachi.

The prime minister should set up the commission in line with the unanimous parliamentary resolution in consultation with Opposition Leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, said PML-N’s Muhammad Siddiqul Farooq at a press conference on Monday.

The PML-N has sent its nominations for commission members to the government while Prime Minister Gilani was on a trip overseas. Despite his return, there has apparently been no further development, he said. The objective of the inquiry, he said, was to highlight weaknesses in the defence system and to expose elements which have defamed the country and its security agencies.

Addressing the media, Farooq called upon the military leadership to stop interfering in political affairs. “Intelligence agencies should search for and eliminate terrorists instead of hunting down politicians,” he added.

If the PM and the leadership of the PPP fail to fullfil their commitment to form an independent commission, it would not only challenge parliament’s supremacy but also prove that the party is busy in the pursuit of a personal agenda and is not at all sincere with Pakistan, he said. He urged the government to expose rogue groups or parties which provide logistical support and shelter terrorists who target Pakistan’s defence system.

Farooq, whose party accuses former president Pervez Musharraf of political victimisation, suggested the military top brass devise tougher selection criteria for cadets so that ‘traitors’ like Pervez Musharraf cannot join the rank and file of the armed forces. “The party does not want the army to face another fiasco like the 1971 war or the Kargil misadventure, he said.

He quoted an incident from 1999 when India had violated Pakistan’s maritime boundary and destroyed an unarmed Pakistan Navy Atlantic plane to substantiate his statement that the army’s involvement in politics diverts its attention from safeguarding the country’s frontiers. He blamed Musharraf and the intelligence agencies for the incident.

Because of their preoccupation with planning a military coup against the legitimately elected government of the PML-N which was toppled just two months later, he said they had been unaware of threats to the country’s defence.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 24^th, 2011.