ISLAMABAD: The situation arising out of the Sept 18 terrorist attack at Uri in held Kashmir showed further signs of gravity on Monday when a number of senators asked the government to convene a joint sitting of parliament to discuss Pakistan-India relations.
At one point during the discussion on a motion regarding Pakistan-India ties on the opening day of the current session of the upper house of parliament, Senate Chairman Raza Rabbani expressed the hope that the government would give serious consideration to this proposal.
Mr Rabbani criticised the trend of convening multiparty conferences on key issues which he said were tantamount to a “negation of parliament”.
Foreign Office slammed: In the National Assembly, Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) chief whip Shireen Mazari said that India was on the verge of declaring war on Pakistan, but the Foreign Office seemed to be unaware of this imminent danger.
Speaking on a point of order regarding recent Indian posturing, Ms Mazari observed that “no one less than Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi threatened to cancel the Indus Waters Treaty (IWT), but we have not seen a befitting response from here”.
“To me, the cancellation of the treaty will be a declaration of war,” she said.
According to Dr Mazari, if somebody believed that the World Bank was the guarantor of the treaty and would come to Pakistan’s rescue, they should understand that the bank had only acted as a facilitator and could hardly do anything if India unilaterally disbanded the agreement.
The voluble PTI lawmaker asked what would happen if tomorrow India decided to withdraw from the IWT on its own and what the possible response from Pakistan would be.
These were queries that warranted a response from the prime minister himself, Dr Mazari said. She asked that at a time when China was standing firmly with Pakistan, the Russians were conducting joint military exercises and Turkey was offering its support on the Kashmir issue, what was stopping the PML-N government from forcefully confronting Mr Modi.
Jamaat-i-Islami lawmaker Sahibzada Tariqullah said that ideally, Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif should have taken parliament into confidence before speaking at the UN General Assembly.
He said that the prime minister should come to the house and make a policy statement on the issue of Kashmir vis-à-vis what the Indian government was up to.
www.dawn.com/news/1286295/joint-session-of-parliament-sought-on-ties-with-india
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