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   With just a week to go before the budget session of the National Assembly, the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N on Saturday requisitioned an emergency session of the house to discuss the delay in formation of an independent commission to investigate the Abbottabad raid in which Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden was killed. On May 14, a joint in camera session of the two houses of parliament adopted a unanimous resolution seeking formation of the commission to probe the incident.
The office of opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan issued copies of the requisition notice which, according to it, was signed by 93 opposition members. It has been submitted to the National Assembly secretariat under Article 54 (3) of the Constitution, which requires the speaker to convene the session within 14 days.
The opposition MNAs also submitted a privilege motion to the NA secretariat against the government for not appointing the commission to investigate the May 2 US raid. They said in the motion that 14 days had passed, “but the government has shown no inclination to give respect to any part of the joint resolution”.
The requisition by the PML-N has come only one week before the expected presentation of the federal budget for 2011-12, putting the government in an awkward position.
Izhar Amrohvi, adviser to the parliamentary affairs ministry, said the government could convene the requisitioned session early next week to dispose of the agenda before a fresh session for presentation of the budget on June 3. Otherwise, he added, the speaker would have no choice but to stop the budget debate midway to convene the requisitioned session.
It was after a long and tense arguing for almost five hours that the government and the opposition had reached a consensus on the 12-point resolution condemning the “US unilateral action” as “violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty” and calling upon the government to “revisit and review its terms of engagement with the United States”.
During an informal chat with reporters on Wednesday, Chaudhry Nisar had hinted at giving a tough time to the government during the forthcoming budget session if it failed to constitute the commission to fix responsibility for the Abbottabad incident.
“The PML-N will react” was his answer to a question about the party’s future strategy if the government failed to constitute the commission for which he said he had already written a letter to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani suggesting the names of some politicians, retired judges and members form the bar, media and civil society.
“The time for doing normal and routine politics is over,” he had said, adding: “The government will have to come out with an explanation on it (implementation of the resolution). Otherwise, there will be a strong reaction during the budget session.” Chaudhry Nisar had also asked the government to convene an “open joint session” of parliament to discuss last week’s terrorist attack on the PNS Mehran base in Karachi, saying his party had decided not to attend any in camera session in future.
Rejecting the new “terms of engagement” agreed with the US, he had urged the government to take parliament into confidence over the issue. He said the armed forces were “guarantors” of the resolution.

(Courtesy by: DAWN NEWS)

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