ISLAMABÆD:Amid confusing
signals over the possibility
of a military operation
against Taliban bases
in
North Waziristan in
the wake of the shooting
of Swat’s schoolgirl
activist Malala
Yosufzai,the Pakistan Muslim League-N aborted on Tuesday a new
govern-ment-backed
resolution in the National
Assem
by calling for
action against militants.But before fiery and sionate move,period of
comparative cordiality when the
PML-N conceded to the
deletion of a single word
from a government bill
seeking
the establishment of
a new drug regulatory
authority,leading to its
unanimous adoption, after
government support enabled
a similar passage of a
PML-N member’s private
bill seeking to abolish
discretionary quotas in
public sector housing
schemes in Islamabad.As the PPP-led
coalition failed to achieve a
house consensus on the
resolutionwhich a source said
only called for
“practical measures”against
militants in general terms in
reaction to the Oct 9 shooting
claimed by Taliban, the move
was given up even without the
draft being moved or read
out before the house was
prorogued after a
12-day session.Chaudhry Nisar Ali
Khan,the leader of
opposition in the house, who took the
floor
twice over the
issue, repeatedly accused the
government of not implementing
most of the previous
unanimous parliamentary
resolutions and said the new one was
being brought as a
precursor to a
military operation
in Waziristan while
Swat’s fugitive Taliban leader
Maulvi Fazlullah, who is
generally
considered as the
mastermind of the Mingora
attack, was living in Afghanistan.But PPP chief whip
and
Religious Affairs
Minister Khursheed Ahmed Shah rejected the
charges, noting that there was no
mention of Waziristan in the
resolution,and offered the
PML-N to make any changes in
the draft, or move one
of their own.But the PML-N was in
no mood to buy the idea
as it appeared getting
closer to an anti-operation
stance taken by the Defence of
Pakistan Council of hard-line
rightwing groups and Imran
Khan’s
Pakistan
Tehrik-i-Insaaf. And the ruling
coalition also was hesitant to
move a resolution without a
consensus of all parties
in parliament, amid reports
of apparent dithering even
by military commanders after
initial expressions of a
resolve to act in concert with an
international outcry
against the attack.
TRADE-OFF ON BILLS:Earlier, in an
apparent trade-off in leg is lative
business, the government backed
