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| Pakistan Parliament |
Islamabad : Pakistani Parliament, though took very long time, finally condemned the US raid on Bin Laden in Pakistani territory with out the permission of Pakistan Government.
The consensus on the 12-point resolution, which condemned the “US unilateral action” as “violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty” and called upon the government to “revisit and review its terms of engagement with the United States”, came about the same time of the day as when US Navy Seal commandos had finished their 40-minute operation on May 2.
It is noteworthy, however, that the resolution asked no questions about the presence of Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad,
close to the country’s premier military training institute.
Neither did the parliamentarians chose to ask for an inquiry into reports that he had lived there for five years.
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| Services Chiefs also attend the Joint Session at Parliament |
After more than five hours of the briefing in camera by top military officials to a joint session of the National Assembly and Senate, it took almost another five hours of deliberations between negotiators of the PPP and PML-N and behind-the-scene shuttling between Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan for both sides to agree on the most contentious issue of setting up an inquiry commission while an investigation by the army adjutant general had already been ordered, sources in the two parties said.
The final shape to the resolution was given by senators Raza Rabbani of the PPP and Ishaq Dar of the PML-N after one proposed by the foreign ministry was discarded, the sources said.
A number of legislators told Dawn they witnessed tense moments a number of times during the process of preparing the draft. They said there was complete understanding among all parties on the original 11 points, but the PML-N refused to sign the draft without including its major demand made by Nawaz Sharif on Wednesday for the formation of a judicial inquiry commission comprising the chief justices of the Supreme Court and high courts.
It was on the PML-N’s demand that the PPP-led coalition had agreed in a house business advisory committee that a unanimous resolution be passed by the session as a meaningful conclusion.
After the PML-N refusal to sign, the prime minister sent PPP chief whip Khursheed Ahmed Shah to Mr Rabbani with a request to help out in preparing a consensus draft, the sources said.
Mr Dar and Mr Rabbani sat on the back benches to draft the resolution and Acting Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi, who chaired the joint session, allowed speeches by dozens of members of both houses while the high military officials, including services chiefs, stayed in their seats to listen to them.
The ruling coalition and military officials, the sources said, were opposed to the idea of the judicial commission because they believed it would once again pitch the military and the judiciary against each other. Moreover, the findings of the judicial commission could acquire the status of a judgement and create a problem for the government, one senior PPP member said.
Later, however, the PPP and the military officials agreed to the demand of the inquiry commission, but asked the PML-N to withdraw the condition that it should comprise judges.
After hectic consultations, which later took place in the chamber of the opposition leader, the PML-N finally agreed on the formation of an “independent commission”, but its insistence that the composition and mandate of the commission should be made part of the resolution and that a timeframe for the commission for holding the inquiry be mentioned again stalled the process.
Leader of the House in Senate Nayyar Bokhari, former information minister Qamar Zaman Kaira and Interior Minister Rehman Malik tried to convince Chaudhry Nisar to agree on the draft, but in vain.
The sources said at one point, the prime minister got so annoyed that he decided to go ahead with the presentation of the resolution to the house without the PML-N and the government even managed to get signatures of parliamentary leaders of all other parties on it.
