Joint session: President to deliver fifth address

Officials unclear if parliamentary address will also cover Pak-US relationship.

ISLAMABAD:

President Asif Ali Zardari will make history later this month when he delivers the fifth consecutive address to a joint session of Parliament at the start of the new parliamentary year.

Zardari on Friday summoned both houses of Parliament for March 17, primarily for his speech in which the president usually lays guidelines for the government's economic and diplomatic policies.

According to a statement, the National Assembly will also hold a separate session from March 14 as a wind-up conference for the current parliamentary year.

The statement did not mention whether Parliament was being called only for the presidential address or if it would discuss any other issue.

However, officials at the National Assembly Secretariat told The Express Tribune that, technically, when a joint session is called for a presidential address, any other agenda cannot be covered.

On the contrary, Federal Religious Affairs Minister Syed Khurshid Shah told a National Assembly committee last month that the March 17 session would be held for a review of Pakistan's engagement with the United States in the war on terror.

The Parliamentary Committee on National Security (PCNS) has finalised recommendations for the government on how to redesign the country's policies in the wake of a changing political landscape.

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani assigned the task to the 17-member bicameral committee to draft these recommendations in the wake of Nato airstrikes on two border posts in the Mohmand tribal region.

Secretariat officials said there was a possibility that another joint session would be convened for the review of Pakistan's anti-terror policies immediately after the mandatory one.

Top diplomatic and administration officials have been hinting that Pakistan might allow international forces stationed in Afghanistan to resume 'non-lethal' supplies through its land routes.

Supplies remain suspended from November 27 since the Mohmand incident, deepening an already existing rift in the bilateral relations of the two countries.

There have been recent suggestions that Pakistan might open its land routes for Nato supplies to Afghanistan, but would charge Western countries extra in the form of levies and taxes.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 10^th, 2012.