Afghanistan News January 2, 2005

January 2, 2005

U.S. Soldier, Afghan Killed in Gunfight
By STEPHEN GRAHAM, Associated Press
KABUL, Afghanistan - A U.S. soldier and a former Afghan militia leader were killed Sunday when American troops clashed with gunmen during a search operation in western Afghanistan, U.S. and Afghan officials said. The troops came under attack from "an unknown number of enemy forces" while searching a compound near Shindand Airfield in Herat province and returned fire, a U.S. military statement said.

"The Afghan citizen died at the scene," the statement said. "The U.S. soldier was wounded in the attack and ... died a short time later at the airfield." The soldier's name was being withheld until his next of kin could be notified. The military also didn't identify the dead Afghan, or say if he was a suspected militant or a bystander.

But a local militia commander, Akhtar Mohammed Husseini, said the compound belonged to a former militia leader called Mullah Dost. "There was fire from both sides. Mullah Dost was killed along with his wife, and two of their children were injured," Husseini told The Associated Press by telephone. "The Americans wanted to search his house, but we don't know who fired first."

Ziauddin Mahmoudi, the provincial police chief, gave a slightly different account, saying Dost and one of his daughters were killed in the pre-dawn fight. Mahmoudi said Dost was a veteran of Afghanistan's war against Soviet occupation in the 1980s who later aligned with the Taliban. He said Dost also served briefly as police chief in Shindand district last year.

U.S. military spokesman Maj. Mark McCann said he had information about only two fatalities but no further details. The dead soldier was the first U.S. combat casualty this year and at least the 117th here since Enduring Freedom, America's anti-terrorism operation, began in late 2001.

It was also the first since the start of Operation Lightning Freedom, the latest phase of the American military operation in Afghanistan, begun after Hamid Karzai's inauguration as the country's first directly elected president in early December. U.S. and Afghan government forces have been stationed at Shindand Airfield, 400 miles west of the capital, Kabul, since intervening to halt bloody factional fighting in the region near the Iranian border in August.

Dozens of Afghan militiamen were killed in the battles, which resulted in the ouster of local strongman Ismail Khan as governor of Herat province. There were no American victims. McCann said Sunday's "routine" search was part of the military's effort to create a stable environment for parliamentary elections expected to take place in April or May.

Yasir named new Taliban spokesman
By Rahimullah Yusufzai – The News Int. (Pakistan) 1/2/05
PESHAWAR: The Taliban have appointed a new principal spokesman with the aim to pursue an aggressive media campaign to tell to their version of events in Afghanistan.

The new appointee is Mohammad Yasir, who will be head of the Taliban information and cultural commission and their main spokesman. He will be assisted by Latifullah Hakimi, who was already operating clandestinely as one of the Taliban spokesmen.

Yasir has replaced Hamid Agha, who will continue to function as member of the Taliban information and cultural commission.

Talking to The News from an undisclosed location, Yasir invited journalists to accompany Taliban fighters during their guerilla operations in Afghanistan. He also expressed his willingness to grant television interviews and make himself accessible to genuine mediapersons. It may be mentioned that the Taliban during their six-year rule had banned taking of pictures of living creatures and generally shunned television crews.

Yasir was in the past affiliated with Afghan mujahideen leader Prof Sayyaf’s Ittehad-i-Islami party. When asked as to why he quit the party, he said Prof Sayyaf’s decision to support the US military invasion of Afghanistan had prompted him to part ways with him. He said he opted to join the Taliban after their leader Mulla Mohammad Omar sacrificed his rule and risked his life by refusing to hand over Osama bin Laden to the US. "Mulla Omar’s courage and steadfastness has impressed me and many others. He is a man of principle and worthy of our support," he argued. In reply to a question whether his decision to join the Taliban was on account of a growing alliance between former mujahideen like him and the Taliban, Yasir said all those opposed to foreign occupation of Afghanistan should gather courage and follow the Taliban leadership in fighting the Americans and their allies.

Afghan govt supports regional security partnership
Xinhua 01/02/2005
KABUL - The Afghan government favors a security partnership plan among regional countries and would support any talks in this field among them, a Defense Ministry spokesman said Sunday.

"Ministry for National Defense is in favor of regional security partnership talks over the issue with the neighboring countries, which includes the new Afghan defense minister's agenda," Zahir Azimi told journalists at a news conference.

"Fighting terrorism, drug abuse and smuggling weapons requires a collective war among the neighboring nations," he noted. He added that cooperation among the neighboring nations would help eliminate terrorism and drug threat in the region.

New Defense Minister General Abdul Rahim Wardak, who took office last week, also briefed his French counterpart Michele Alliot-Marie about his plan for a regional security partnership last Friday and received her backing, according to Azimi.

The French defense minister, who was on a two-day visit to the Central Asian country, marked the New Year's Eve with French forces deployed in Kabul under the leadership of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). She also held talks with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The Afghan spokesman gave no detail about the plan but the United States and its frontline allies in the war on terrorism, Afghanistan and Pakistan have been engaged in the fighting against the Taliban and al-Qaeda remnants for the last three years.

Taleban welcomes US announcement to release Afghan militants in 2005 - Pajhwok Afghan News 01/02/2005 By Abdul Qadir Munsef

KABUL - A spokesman for the Taleban, Mufti Lutfullah Hakimi, said the announcement by a commander of the US led coalition in Afghanistan, on Friday 31st, to release several suspected militants held in US custody in the New Year, was an important and great action.

Speaking to Pajhwok Afghan News from an undisclosed location by satellite phone, Hakimi said he will comment further on the issue after consulting the leader of the movement.

In an interview with the BBC, a commander for the US led coalition in Afghanistan, Lieutenant General David Barno said numbers in the detention centers would probably come down as a US and Afghan government amnesty offer to the movement gets underway in the new year.

The move would be part of efforts aimed at persuading Taleban members to abandon their insurgency. When Pajhwok asked the coalition spokesman in Kabul about when and how many Taleban will be freed, they said they were not able to elaborate further at the moment.

According to the BBC, the US forces are holding more than 500 people at its two main bases in Afghanistan, Bagram and Kandahar. The BBC also quoted Lt Gen Barno as saying that a commission was currently working out a plan on how to release the suspected militants.

Mirwais Ulfat, a political analyst based in Kabul, said the New Year release will help strengthen security in the country. "On one hand, this move is a bid to appease the public in Afghanistan and on the other hand, it is a signal of peace, reconciliation and negotiations with the Taliban," Ulfat said.

Gen. Barno also said that some Taleban leaders and politicians were talking about how to involve the militant movement in the political process in Afghanistan.

He also added that President Hamid Karzai will soon speak to the public about the possibilities of the Taleban joining the Afghan political process in the near future.

Two German soldiers injured in Afghanistan
BERLIN, Jan 2 (AFP) - Two German soldiers were hurt in an explosion as they were destroying weapons in northern Afghanistan, an army spokesman said on Sunday.

The soldiers are being flown back to Germany for treatment but their lives are not in danger, he added. They were part of a team based in Kunduz where their work consists mainly of collecting weapons and ammunition and putting it out of use.

Germany contributes around 2,000 soldiers to the 7,000-strong International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). Separately, around 16,500 US troops continue to battle insurgents in the south.

Armed and Elusive, Afghan Drug Dealers Roam Free
By CARLOTTA GALL – The New York times 1/2/05
ZARANJ, Afghanistan - Seen from the air, the Margo desert, which sprawls across the far southwestern corner of Afghanistan toward the borders with Iran and Pakistan, is traced with white car tracks.

With its forbidding reputation as the "desert of death," it deters most travelers but is the favored route of drug traffickers taking opium, heroin and hashish produced in Afghanistan to Iran for smuggling to Turkey and Europe. They cross in armed convoys of 10 to 20 pickup trucks, at such high speed that police officials say they cannot catch them.

"The smugglers know the desert very well," said the police chief of Nimruz Province, who goes by one name, Asadullah. "They have very powerful cars, Land Cruisers that go at 250 kilometers an hour," he said. That is more than 150 miles an hour. The desert is so smooth that the drivers can indeed move at high speeds. The 300-mile border that Nimruz Province shares with Pakistan and Iran is wide open for them, he added.

The desert crossing is part of a lucrative drug trade that threatens to turn Afghanistan into a narco-mafia state, United Nations and Afghan officials warn. Afghanistan, the biggest producer of opium in the world, is now the source of 90 percent of the heroin on Europe's streets, the United Nations antidrug agency says.

Although farmers all over Afghanistan have been turning to poppy cultivation - causing such farming to increase by 60 percent in 2004 - they often remain impoverished, while big profits are being made by the dealers and traffickers, they say.

Drugs leave Afghanistan by three main routes: from the northeast into Tajikistan and on to Russia; into Pakistan and its ports, and westward across the desert into Iran.

Of the three, this corner of Afghanistan, where Baluch tribesmen have survived by banditry and smuggling for centuries and tend not to recognize national boundaries, is perhaps the most notorious.

At the remote point where Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iran meet, American Special Forces swooped down on a camel train in search of Osama bin Laden, or his son Saad bin Laden, in March 2003 after intercepting a satellite telephone call from the younger man. But the train turned out to be ordinary smugglers, a Pakistani official in Afghanistan said at the time.

The profits from trafficking are easy to see here in this dust-blown, arid town on the border with Iran. Farmers have been ruined by a seven-year drought, and townspeople have to fetch their drinking water in plastic containers from public taps, but lavish villas, decorated with colored tiles and mirrored glass, are being built.

"That house belongs to a drug smuggler," said Ghulam Ghous Sistani, the chief of the counternarcotics team in Nimruz, pointing to one new white villa as he drove through the town. He showed half a dozen more, naming the owners each time. One also owned a hotel in the capital, Kabul, he said. The fancy houses have gone up just in the last year, indicating a confidence among drug smugglers that they can buy land and build freely in Afghanistan these days.

But however well known the big drug bosses are, the police have little hope of proving their suspicions. "Without proof we cannot arrest anyone," said Asadullah, the police chief. "If we do, we will be punished."

Catching even the couriers is extremely difficult, Mr. Sistani said. "They go straight through the desert to the border," he said. "They have rocket launchers and machine guns. We don't have the power to fight them."

Just 10 days earlier, Mr. Sistani was on patrol in the desert when he spotted a drug convoy. "I was in my own car," he said. "They were in six cars, with about 15 to 20 armed men. They saw us but they were not scared of us."

"We have no vehicles, no radios," he said. "No one helps us. Fighting smugglers is very serious. We should have 15 fast cars, weapons, satellite telephones, otherwise we cannot fight them. "When I get invited to meetings in Kabul, they always say Nimruz is the place of smuggling, and I say, 'How can we stop it?' "

The scale of the problem and the deadly seriousness of the smugglers have been confirmed by the Iranian authorities and the United Nations. Iran has lost more than 3,000 police officers battling the drug smugglers in the last 10 years, Muhammad R. Bahrami, Iran's ambassador to Afghanistan, said in a recent interview. In an effort to improve Afghan border control, Iran is building and equipping 25 border checkpoints for the Afghan authorities along their common border, and has donated 100 motorbikes to the Afghan police.

In Vienna, Antonio Maria Costa, executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, who detailed the scale of the Afghan narcotics trade in a report last month, said Iranian intelligence had shown him pictures of a drug convoy of more than 60 vehicles with armed protection making the crossing from Afghanistan to Iran in September 2003.

The Afghan police said tough paramilitary policing by Iran, including aerial bombing and dropping troops in by helicopter to intercept smugglers, had forced the smugglers to reduce the scale of the convoys and even to revert to camel trains. The Iranian police in the central town of Nain recently caught smugglers transporting camels and found drugs in the stomachs of the camels after slaughtering them, the official news agency, IRNA, reported last month.

The Afghan police have seized some drugs, but Mr. Sistani said they were catching people only at the lower end of the smuggling operation. Inside a sealed metal shipping container at the police station, he showed off more than 1,200 pounds of confiscated heroin, opium and hashish, as well as a small stove used for processing morphine.

"We caught these on donkeys, camels and motorbikes," he said. "The rule is the same the world over, they dump the drugs and run away." Some of the camel and donkey trains are left to make their own way across the border so the police capture the contraband but no people, he said.

New Year Message from the Governor General of Canada, Her Excellency the Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson from Kabul, Afghanistan, Thursday, December 30, 2004
I hope that you are having a fine holiday with friends and family, celebrating the New Year and all the blessings that we enjoy as Canadians.

I am now with our troops in Kabul, Afghanistan. It has been my custom, as Commander-in-Chief of the Canadian Forces, to join our service men and women in their missions abroad. Each year, we have been to a different spot: first Kosovo, then Bosnia, the Arabian Gulf, and last year in Kabul. I wish you could see what it means to them when we bring the best wishes of all Canadians, including hundreds of cards, letters and videotaped messages that were made at our winter levee at Rideau Hall.

2004 was filled with heartfelt remembrance. We joined our veterans in Normandy for the 60th anniversary of the D-Day invasion, and in Italy for the commemoration of the brutal Italian Campaign of 1943-45.

It is wonderful that 2005 has been declared The Year of the Veteran – we will continue to offer our respects for the awful price that they and their comrades paid on our behalf. We will remember that in those two campaigns alone, 33,000 were wounded. Nearly 10,000 Canadians were buried, in the prime of their youth, in Italy and France.

Seeing the tombstones, "row on row", made real for me these sacrifices, which have allowed us to become the diverse, dynamic and fundamentally decent country we are today. They permit us to do good in the world. That is why it is so important to bring a little slice of home, during this holiday season, to the 700 members of Operation ATHENA in Afghanistan. They are making a real difference, not only building peace but promoting development and a return to democracy for the Afghan people.

All over the world, we help others with the same task we have at home: encouraging lively communities that form a self-assured and compassionate nation. We do this by giving careful attention to our history and to the legacy that we leave. We do this by following one of our greatest writers and leaders, Joseph Howe, who captured the best of what Canadians can be in these words: "The only questions I ask myself are, 'What is right? What is just? What is for the public good?'" Just past the 200th anniversary of Howe's birth, as we enter a New Year, let us ask and thoughtfully answer these questions for ourselves. It is the most that we can do. I wish you all a Happy New Year!

Information minister rejects his deputy's censorship claim
Pajhwok Afghan News 01/02/2005 By Nooria Ashori
KABUL - Abdul Hamid Mubarez, the former deputy minister of culture and information ministry, regards the censorship–oriented policy of the ministry's leadership as the reason of his resignation, but the minister denies this claim.

Dr. Sayed Makhdoum Raheen, the newly re-appointed minister of information and culture, said: "Mubarez's retirement was cancelled twice. As he knows that the cancellation of retirement for the third time is not possible, he wants to create uproar. And I am amazed that a person aged 80 years wants to spread a rumor of censorship with lying."

Mubarez, media affairs deputy at the ministry, told Pajhwok Afghan News: "I kept working so long as the minister was accepting the media policy, but when he distanced from the policy, he started censoring, instead of respecting freedom of media and freedom of expression.

"As I have spent my life in battling for media and freedom of expression, and I was not heard and I could not bear working anymore, therefore I presented my resignation."

Mubarez was unhappy that some of the basic points of the open discussions that took place in international media center organized by him, and broadcast through television, were censored.

"We promised not to hide anything from the public; there is not censorship anymore which must be enforced in media. There is a press law according to which we should act."

Mubarez said: "My duty is not related to a person, but instead it is related to policy; as long as policy is supported, a person is not important to me. I myself did not demand ministry."

When questioned why he was quiet about media censorship before his resignation, he said that haste was not good. He was battling so long as he was optimistic, and had the policy been enforced and respected, no reason would have remained for his resignation.

"Recruitments and dismissals in the information and culture ministry, none of which is presented in press meeting in information and culture ministry is a unprecedented event compared to other ministries."

The Afghan Independent Journalists Association and Committee to Protect Afghan Journalists have expressed regret over the resignation of Abdul Hamid Mubarez, arguing that it was an irrevocable loss for the Afghan press.

Another Effort to Eliminate Corruption
IWPR 01/01/2005 Wahidullah Amani
Cynics warn that unless President Hamed Karzai enforces the new decree requiring officials to list their financial holdings, it will be meaningless

Afghan president Hamed Karzai seems determined to clamp down on corruption in his newly formed government. Karzai, who was sworn in as president on December 7, says he wants all his officials to disclose their financial holdings. He has also issued strict guidelines about accepting expensive gifts and expenses on overseas visits.

Karzai is insisting that all officials in the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government hand over full details of all their properties and business dealings, along with those of their wives and children, within two weeks.

In addition, he has said that if ministers and their advisers on overseas trips received official gifts valued at more than 200 US dollars they should register them with the president's office. The decree also lays down the rules on ministerial visits overseas and even the gifts that should be presented to officials of host countries.

Karzai, who announced his new cabinet on December 23, is said to have delayed making the announcement until he had examined the financial probity of the appointees.

"I wanted to know about their financial backgrounds," he said, "and asked every potential minister about their properties, land, money and bank accounts." Government officials consider it a positive step.

Mohammed Yunos Naw Andish, deputy minister of water and power, said these moves should give the public greater confidence in the administration. He said he is willing to list his holdings and submit his report to the president's office.

And Naw Andish wants the government to look into the work of previous administrations. "They should examine the numerous bank accounts and financial dealings of the militia commanders who have held office in the past three years," he said.

Azizullah Lodin, the head of the government's anti-corruption office, agreed. He said that even before the new decree was issues, there was a system in place for officials to declare their business interests but that it had largely been ignored.

"There are people in previous administrations that used their positions to seize property which they then sold off," he said. "Some of them became billionaires within these three years and action should be taken against them."

He said that implementation of the law had been difficult in the past because previous governments had been unable to exert control over the entire country.
"Now we have a proper government, the law should be upheld," he said.

But political analyst, Habibullah Rafi, of the Kabul Science Academy remained dubious. He said that Karzai had issued lots of decrees in his interim administration, including one on the disclosure of holdings.

"But he could make only a few people list their assets and I think most will simply ignore [the new decree]," he said. "If a decree is issued, then it should be applied.

"Karzai is no longer heading an allied administration. He is the leader of a government, which has the support of the voters and the international community. "People want strong leadership and if he doesn't use the power he has now to wipe out corruption, tomorrow the country could turn against him."

Unmanned spy plane crashes in Pakistani territory near Afghan border
An unmanned spy plane crashed near a Pakistani village along the Afghan border, an army spokesman said Sunday. No injuries were reported.

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan would not say whether the drone, which crashed late Saturday in North Waziristan, belonged to the U.S. military, which has thousands of forces hunting al-Qaida and Taliban militants on the Afghan side of the rugged border. He said the wind had probably made the plane drift into Pakistani territory. It crashed a few hundred meters (yards) from the village of Ghulam Khan.

Meanwhile, Pakistani troops fired into Afghanistan in retaliation for about 25 mortar rounds fired by unknown forces that landed in North Waziristan early Sunday. Authorities were investigating who was responsible. "We don't know whether they were terrorists or Afghan national army (troops)," Sultan said. No one was injured on the Pakistan side of the border.

Waziristan has been a hiding place for Arab, Central Asian and Afghan militants, believed linked with al-Qaida. Pakistani forces have launched military operations against the militants, also accused of launching attacks inside Afghanistan.

The border between the two countries is unclear in places. Stray fire, cross-border militant attacks and exchanges of fire between the Pakistan and Afghan armies in disputed areas have been reported in the past.

Pak extradites suspected Islamic militants
NDTV.com, January 2, 2005
Istanbul: Pakistan has extradited two suspected Islamic militants alleged to have ties to Al-Qaida to Turkey. Television footage showed two bearded men being taken from an airplane by Turkish police.

The Turks, identified as Mehmet Yilmaz and Mahmut Kaplan, were brought Friday to Gaziantep, a city in southeastern Turkey, the semiofficial Anatolia news agency reported.

The two had gone to Pakistan two years before, and were accused of trying to win followers for an illegal Islamic group in Gaziantep. It was not clear what charges they faced.

A diplomat confirmed that the two were suspected of links to Al-Qaida, but could not confirm their deportation from Pakistan. A Turkish official said he had no information.

Pakistani officials have said two Turks fled the tribal area of Waziristan, which has been the focus of military operations against Al-Qaida, and were captured in Lahore this summer. (AP)

Madrassa muddle
The News Int. editorial 1.2.05
President General Pervez Musharraf's umpteenth call for to mainstream madrassa students is quite correct. But while it is importing to keep repeating words in order to set the ball rolling in a certain direction, the madrassa issue cannot be resolved through mere calls, made in the hope that things will turn out the way they are expected to against the backdrop of a clerical mass that draws its strength from the status quo. Without a mix of legal and administrative measures, the task of mainstreaming over a million students from seminaries in order to open new windows of opportunities to them will remain a pipedream.

It was on January 12, 2002 that the Gen. Musharraf first promised to reform the madrassa sector as he placed before the nation his blueprint for fighting terrorism. The mainstreaming of madrassas, including their integration with the government-run education system and registration, was the centrepiece of his strategy. In addition to the promises of regulating their curriculum and monitoring funding, the president also pledged that all madrassas would adopt government-issued syllabi by the end of 2002. Most of these measures were incorporated in a draft presidential ordinance in June 2002, which provoked the religious right to issue warnings of street agitation. The pressure was enough for the government to stash away the draft ordinance before enacting it, thus indicating the difficulties of taking any intrusive step in a domain that mushroomed under the military's patronage during the Afghan jihad. The promises remained unfulfilled.

Subsequent official initiatives to reform seminaries, like the Madrassa Reforms Project that sought to introduce non-religious subjects in seminaries and facilitate their infrastructural development, however, became a source of government funding to the clerics who were at the time negotiating the text of the 17th amendment. Many madrassas did avail of the funding to introduce modern subjects like English, mathematics, general science and computers, but the duration of teaching these subjects was at times not even an hour a month. Cosmetic reforms indeed were followed by cosmetic implementation. It is against this backdrop that Gen. Musharraf's fresh call for madrassa reforms is important but needs to be backed by a coherent strategy and planning.

Any expectation that the clergy trained and groomed in a conservative education environment will understand the importance of opening up new doors to their students is as misplaced as an effort to grow a pine tree in a desert. It is incomprehensible why the government continues to expect the seminaries to voluntarily comply with its wish list when similar approach has failed more than once in the past. What is needed is a law that will bind the seminaries to register as educational institutions just like all others in the private sector, follow a certain curriculum that is not divisive on sectarian lines, declare all their sources of funding and adopt a standardized examination system.

So far the seminaries have only been offered carrots by the state, but what is now needed is a deterring legal stick. An ideal situation would be an affirmative action by the state to expand the public sector education delivery system to far corners of the country as an alternative for poorest of the poor.

'Musharraf trying to break MMA'
from DILSHAD AZEEM – The Nation
ISLAMABAD - The MMA Secretary General Maulana Fazlur Rehman, predicting formation of Opposition’s anti-uniform grand alliance, Friday alleged that President General Pervez Musharraf was personally involved in the bids to break the religious alliance.

“Musharraf personally tried to break the MMA and asked our members to part ways with the Majlis in absence of anti-defection law,” Maulana said while addressing a Press conference here while rejecting the President’s claim that the MMA repeatedly violated the accord.

He said Musharraf’s announcement not to relinquish the military chief slot has provided an atmosphere to the Opposition to join hands and establish a grand national alliance to launch a forceful anti-Musharraf movement.

“The ARD parties have joined us in observing January 1 as a black day to express hate against those broke the promise and the Constitution with the announcement of not to separate two offices.”

“We have neither broke the accord nor the constitutional amendment and we will continue to follow the Sunnah to honour the agreement,” the MMA secretary general said when asked whether the Majlis still owns the 17th Amendment and accepts General Musharraf a constitutional President.

A few days before, Maulana Fazl as well as Qazi Hussain Ahmed had announced not to accept General Musharraf a constitutional President if he does not relinquish the military chief slot by December 31, 2004. “We should accept realities as it will be wrong if we say that the amendment has expired.”

The MMA leadership, he said, has asked its workers to observe the black day by ensuring that all steps are taken within the legal and constitutional limits as no blockade of roads or unconstitutional way will be adopted.

“Our real protest will start from January 1 with observance of the black day and future strategy will be chalked out in consultation with other parties including smaller ones,” Fazl added.

Fazl, who is also the Opposition Leader in National Assembly, said Musharraf backed out his promise he had made with the nation and agreed with the MMA on the uniform issue. “We have not taken any decision as yet under which we cannot hold talk with the government over the issues,” he said when asked whether the MMA will continue dialogue process.

However, he said it is the duty of the government to provide a conducive atmosphere to the Opposition if the talks are to be conducted. “They are also suppressed ones,” he said when asked whether the MMA will contact those remained part of the government-MMA talks (Shujat and Tariq Aziz).

“This is Musharraf himself who have violated the accord and the Constitution, whereas he is trying to malign the MMA by leveling baseless allegations of backing out the agreement. Musharraf is solely responsible for political mess.”
On NSC, he said the MMA did not promise with the government to support the formation of the council through an Act of Parliament. “They did not consult us when they brought the NSC bill before the Parliament.”