LAHORE, May 30: Jamaat-i-Islami Amir Qazi Hussain Ahmed on Friday demanded reduction in the size of the armed forces.

The party chief said that armed forces consumed a major chunk of the budget leaving meager resources for solving problems of the masses.

He said he favoured a smart but professional force armed with latest weaponry, including nuclear ones, and preparing citizens as reserved force for the country’s defence.

Mr Qazi said that a wide gap between an officer and a soldier existed in the army as the former considered the latter inferior. “It is not an Islamic army for its officers are keeping a distance with soldiers and thus it should be re-organized.”

The JI chief said the man who abrogated the Constitution twice, massacred citizens in Red Mosque, Waziristan, Swat and Balochistan, destroyed the institution of judiciary and sold out Pakistanis to America for dollars must be brought to justice instead of giving him a safe exit.

He said every dictator damaged the system but Musharraf did the worst.

Mr Qazi demanded implementation of Article 6 of the Constitution, which prescribes capital punishment for repealing the basic law, to check recurrence of unconstitutional acts. Neither the army, landlords and capitalists nor the leaders who plundered the national wealth would ever fight for the rights of the poor, he said.

For the purpose, he said, the poor had to awake from their deep slumber and become part of a struggle against the forces of exploitation.