From: imran@panix.com (Imran Anwar)
Subject: PakistaNews Text Files Until New Year - #1222
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 04:34:17 GMT
Organization: IMRAN: Information & Media Resources, Affiliations, Networks

These are two news items from Rueters that I saw recently.
For information and discussion of net readers only.

Imran Anwar


Headline: PAKISTAN PRESIDENT URGES END TO POLITICAL BATTLES
Date: Tue, Dec 22, 1992

    ISLAMABAD, Dec 22, Reuter - Pakistani President Ghulam Ishaq Khan urged 
reconciliation between the government and opposition, which is campaigning to 
overthrow Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, in his state of the nation address on 
Tuesday.
    Outside the parliament, thousands of police equipped with machine-guns and 
tear-gas threw a massive security net around the capital, Islamabad, to prevent
protests by supporters of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
    The huge police turnout failed to deter a hardcore of a few hundred 
demonstrators who marched through central Islamabad and clashed with police. 
Several dozen arrests were reported.
    "Ishaq is a dog, Ishaq is a dog," the protesters chanted as police charged 
them with batons, forcing them to disperse.
    "Benazir, we are with you," they shouted. Many threw stones at police and 
set fire to heaps of tyres.
    Bhutto did not attend the joint session of parliament and a spokesman at 
her home in the southern city of Karachi said she was unwell.
    All members of her opposition coalition stayed away from the parliament and
said they were boycotting the president's speech. Last year the opposition 
shouted abuse at the president and walked out.
    "If differences stand in the way, reconciliation can be sought while 
remaining within the limits of the constitution and the law," Ishaq Khan told 
the joint session of parliament.
    "Political issues should be settled politically through political 
institutions," he said in a veiled reference to the "long march" campaign 
launched by Bhutto last month to try to oust Sharif's government.
    The opposition accuses Sharif's government of corruption and rigging the 
1990 elections, held two months after Ishaq Khan sacked Bhutto as prime 
minister, charging her with misrule and corruption.
    "It may not be out of place to add that...the nation expects greater 
sobriety, depth and toleration from its representatives," Ishaq Khan told 
parliament.
    The increasingly bitter antagonism between the government and the 
opposition could damage Pakistan's fledgling democratic system, he said. 
Pakistan has been under martial law for more than half of its 45 years.
    The president did not confine his criticism to the opposition, and 
expressed his disapproval of what he called the government's tendency to govern
by issuing ordinances rather than through parliamentary legislation.
    Ishaq Khan raised a national furore last week when he issued an ordinance 
curtailing the powers of the judiciary for the first time since the lifting of 
martial law in 1986 by barring higher courts from hearing bail applications 
from people on trial in special anti-terrorist courts.
    Ordinances are issued while the National Assembly (lower house) is not 
sitting and must be ratified by the house within four months to be passed into 
law.





    RAWALPINDI, Pakistan, Dec 21, Reuter - Thousands of people shouting 
anti-government slogans gathered in a Pakistan park on Monday for a rally at 
which opposition leaders demanded the resignation of Prime Minister Nawaz 
Sharif.
    "Goodbye, goodbye Nawaz Sharif," the crowds shouted in the park in 
Islamabad's twin city of Rawalpindi.
    The opposition coalition led by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto called
the rally as part of its month-old campaign aimed at ousting a government it 
accuses of corruption, misrule and rigging the elections in 1990.
    Bhutto did not attend the march through the city on the eve of a state of 
the nation address by President Ghulam Ishaq Khan.
    A spokesman at her home in Karachi said she was unwell, adding it was 
unclear whether she would attend Tuesday's opening of parliament.
    During the 1991 state of the nation speech the opposition heckled the 
president, who the previous year had sacked Bhutto on disputed charges of 
misrule and corruption.
    "We have appealed to the president to exercise his rights under the 
constitution," opposition spokesman Khurshid Kasuri said when asked if the 
opposition hoped its campaign would persuade Ishaq Khan to sack the current 
government.
    Several opposition leaders addressed the rally, vowing to persist with the 
"long march" against the government. They had yet to decide if they would 
boycott the opening of parliament.
    Some also demanded the government repeal a presidential order issued last 
week curbing the powers of the judiciary for the first time since martial law 
was lifted in 1986.
    An opposition leader became the first victim of the order on Sunday when an
anti-terrorist court in Lahore cancelled bail for Salman Taseer, spokesman of 
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party.
    He was charged with sedition after he was arrested on November 18 when he 
tried to go to Islamabad for the start of Bhutto's "long march."
    The ordinance bars higher courts from hearing bail applications from people
facing trial in anti-terrorist courts.
    Lawyers and human rights activists said the order was directed against Asif
Ali Zardari, Bhutto's jailed husband.
    Zardari, a member of the National Assembly, has been held in jail since 
October 1990 on a string of charges ranging from corruption to murder. He has 
been acquitted of five so far.

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