PM calls all-parties security conference for Sept 29

Khar, military leadership to brief participants on the situation; PML-N yet to decide attendance.

ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani has announced September 29 as the date for an all-parties conference on the national security situation, which has been called in the wake of serious US allegations against Pakistan.

According to a statement issued by the prime minister’s office on Monday, Foreign Minister Hina Rabbani Khar, who will be returning immediately after her address to the General Assembly on September 27, will brief the political leadership about the security situation in the region in general and Pakistan in particular.

The military leadership will also brief participants, the statement said.

Meanwhile, the main opposition party Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz has yet to decide whether it will attend the conference.

“We will take a decision with regards to the conference on Tuesday (today),” PML-N Information Secretary Senator Mushahid Ullah Khan told The Express Tribune. However, he said, “it is a national issue and the PML-N will not lag behind at this hour.”

Responding to a question, he said that the meeting to arrive at a decision will soon be held in Raiwind, chaired by party chief Nawaz Sharif.

Earlier in the day, Senator Ishaq Dar had written a letter to the prime minister asking for a joint session of the parliament. The move has come parallel to the PM’s announcement of the conference.

When asked for the PML-N’s reasons for demanding a joint sitting of parliament, Khan explained that, “Parliament is a constitutional forum where representatives of national institutions [military and intelligence] can share details and take lawmakers into confidence regarding national security”.

Recalling previous joint sessions and closed-door briefings by military and intelligence officials, he said “the briefing to the joint session should not be in-camera. It should be public.”

In his letter to the PM, Senator Dar had said that “the viewpoints of all stakeholders in Pakistan must also be ascertained against the allegations [levelled by US Defence Secretary Leon Panetta and Admiral Mike Mullen].”

He said that the anti-Pakistan joint briefing in Washington on September 22 by Panetta and Mullen appears to have been aimed at stemming the nosedive in the morale of US soldiers in Afghanistan.

“Reportedly, both men share the responsibility for America’s failure to achieve peace objectives in Afghanistan and protect the lives of US soldiers in the country. It seems that Pakistan came as an easy scapegoat as no credible evidence has been produced till date by the said persons pertaining to allegations elucidated by them against Pakistan,” the letter reads.

The letter says that ‘under the circumstances, solidarity of political parties and parliamentarians is direly needed. It is essential that a joint session of parliament is summoned immediately and a frank discussion takes place on the subject’.

Earlier, opposition leader in the National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan had also demanded the government to call a session of the parliament. President Asif Ali Zardari has summoned a session of the National Assembly on October 3.

Meanwhile, Senator Raza Rabbani has also convened a session of the Parliamentary Committee on National Security on the same day as the National Assembly meets (October 3).

Published in The Express Tribune, September 27^th,  2011.

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