ISLAMABAD, Nov 13: A disallowed prayer and a protest over the recent deadly missile strike in the Bajaur tribal area broke up the National Assembly session on Monday, reflecting heightened tensions between the government and opposition parties.

Speaker Chaudhry Amir Hussain adjourned the house until Tuesday without taking up the day’s agenda after the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, which led the opposition protest, boycotted a meeting of parliamentary group leaders he had called to draw up a programme of opposition-sought debates on several issues, including the Oct 30 military strike on a Bajaur madressah that killed 82 people and an apparently revenge suicide attack in Dargai on Wednesday that killed 42 army recruits.

The speaker had blocked a planned Fateha prayer for the Bajaur and Dargai dead when the house began its present session on Friday but the MMA managed to do it on Monday during a reference for the late alliance house member Abdus Sattar Afghani, calling the Bajaur victims “martyrs” in a challenge to government claims that all those killed in the seminary were militants training for terrorist activities.

On Friday, the speaker had provoked an MMA protest and a threat of disruption of future proceedings when he himself led the Fateha prayer for former president Ghulam Ishaq Khan, Mr Afghani and former MNA Darya Khan Khoso and said no prayer would be said for anybody else, in a move to avoid the Bajaur victims being described as martyrs and equated with army recruits killed at the Dargai parade ground.

The trouble on Monday began when the speaker allowed a speech on Mr Afghani by MMA deputy parliamentary leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmad, who instead began saying a Fateha prayer, which probably would have mentioned the Bajaur dead, only to find his mike immediately switched off on the chair’s orders and the floor given to another MMA member Qari Gul Rahman from Karachi.

But Qari Rahman did no differently and, in a quickfire prayer, called the Bajaur strike victims “martyrs” before his mike was also switched off.

The speaker's anger at the MMA manoeuvre provoked more protests from all opposition benches, forcing him to adjourn the proceedings for 15 minutes, which opposition members used to besiege the abandoned dais and shout slogans mainly against the Bajaur action and President Gen Pervez Musharraf.

“Give another push to the murderers of Bajaur martyrs”, “give another push to the traitor to the constitution”, and “whoever is friend of America is a traitor to the country” (Pakistan), they chanted repeatedly, with a solitary response from the ruling Pakistan Muslim League’s Mehnaz Rafi: “Give another push to mullahs.”

The situation had not changed much when the session resumed, when an irate speaker had a new complaint against the MMA for not coming to a house business advisory committee meeting that he said he had called during the break to chalk out a programme for taking up opposition adjournment motions for debates on various issues, including one on Bajaur to which, he said PML president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain had also agreed.

“Your politics of protest and slog-chanting is not increasing the prestige of this house,” Mr Hussain bemoaned, pointing only to the MMA, and sparing other main opposition groups like the People's Party Parliamentarians and the Pakistan Muslim League-N which, he said, had sent their representatives to his meeting.

The speaker renewed his invitation to the MMA and other opposition parties to another business advisory committee meeting called for 9am on Tuesday, an hour before the assembly is to meet for the session’s first private members’ day, which would be devoted to private bills or other motions.

But there was no immediate information about opposition response to the speaker’s invitation.

In another move, a privilege motion signed by several members of the PPP and the PML-N was sent to the speaker on Monday calling for a discussion in the house and action against Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afgan Khan Niazi over his reported remarks describing opposition members as uncivilised whom President Gen Musharraf would not like to address.

A similar motion has already been filed by the MMA.