PML-N Chief Nawaz Sharif. —File Photo

LAHORE: The PML-N urged the Supreme Court on Friday to set up a commission to investigate the issue of a secret memo to former US military chief Mike Mullen because it had been proved that such a letter could have been written only by someone in a government authority.

The demand was made by the chief of the party, Mian Nawaz Sharif, in a statement and by deputy Secretary-General Ahsan Iqbal at a press conference.

Nawaz Sharif said sovereignty of the country would be protected by all means and any attempt to undermine it would be foiled.

He said civil society, senior judges and members of national and provincial assemblies should be made members of the commission.

The PML-N leader claimed that elements who had taken to the country into abyss of despair deserved no leniency. They must be awarded stern punishment. He said that although six months had passed, the report of the commission investigating the US raid on the Osama bin Laden hideout in Abbottabad had not been made public which showed nefarious intentions of the government and other elements. He said such elements could not lead the nation to the right direction.

He said the so-called federal government and the commission constituted by it had swept everything under the carpet.

Mr Iqbal said no ambassador could write such a letter without the approval of the president or the prime minister and alleged that President Asif Ali Zardari was the main character behind the scam.

Mr Iqbal said wrong policies of the federal government had caused immense harm to poor farmers of Punjab and rendered the province barren. In the recent past, the federal government had created a sugar crisis and everyone suffered from it and now it had created the fertiliser crisis because of what he called wrong policies being deliberately pursued by the federal
government. If the federal government does not mend its ways, it would end up hurting farmers and the Rabi crop and create food shortage in the country.

“The State Guest House in Lahore has become a centre of black marketing of urea. Q-League members of national and provincial assemblies, pretending to be urea distributors, are fleecing farmers by charging a commission of Rs200 per bag,” he alleged.

He demanded a high-level probe into the ‘nefarious trade’ and said: “If investigated, the urea fertiliser case will prove to be a much bigger scandal than the NICL corruption case.”