ISLAMABAD, May 8: Both friends and foes of the new government urged it during a Senate debate on Thursday to review what many saw as a pro-US foreign policy charted by a military-led establishment, which the coalition-leading Pakistan People’s Party said it would not become part of.

Senators from Islamic parties, majority of whom are allies of Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani’s 40-day-old coalition government, were most vehement in demanding that Pakistan withdraw from the US-led so-called war against terrorism while most of others who spoke in the inconclusive debate wanted changes to make the foreign policy independent of American dictation and for initiatives to end the scourge of pro-Taliban militancy in the country, particularly in tribal areas bordering Afghanistan.

Demands for a change for the better also came from some members of the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League (PML) although they praised the performance of their previous government and President Pervez Musharraf, who made Pakistan a key ally of the US-led coalition in the aftermath of the Sept 11, 2001, attacks on the United States.

The opposition-sought debate, to be resumed on Friday when the house will meet at 9.30am, came 11 days after Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi told the same house that the government would continue anti-terrorism cooperation with the United States because “it is in our national interest” but would not compromise on national sovereignty by allowing foreign troops to operate inside its borders.

Though no Senator from the PPP spoke on foreign policy as such during Thursday’s sparsely attended evening sitting, leader of the house Raza Rabbani came out strongly against some of PML secretary-general Mushahid Hussain Syed’s remarks in his debate-opening speech that described the PPP as a new partner of ‘the establishment’ and opposed the government’s plans to ask the UN Security Council to set up a commission to inquire into the Dec 27 assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto.

“The PPP has never been, nor it is now nor it will become part of the establishment in the future,” Mr Rabbani said, adding that his was an anti-status quo party representing the working classes.

“And if the PPP has to make a choice between maintaining this role and being in power, it will give up power,” said the senator who is known for taking strong positions and who declined to become a minister in Mr Gilani’s cabinet because he did not want to be sworn in by Mr Musharraf whom he did not recognise as a legitimate head of state.

He said there was no question of the PPP seeking to be intimate with Mr Musharraf as the coalition government was having only a working relationship with him ‘within the ambit of the constitution’.

Mr Rabbani rejected Mr Syed’s argument that a UN inquiry into Ms Bhutto’s assassination would put Pakistan’s nuclear assets at risk and said the terms of reference of the proposed international commission would be restricted to investigate the causes of Ms Bhutto’s assassination and unearth ‘hands within or outside the country’ that were responsible for the act.

It was the second time a senior member of the former ruling party came out against a PPP-sponsored resolution passed by the National Assembly last month asking the government to request the Security Council to appoint the inquiry commission. Last week, PML senator SM Zafar opposed the move on similar grounds, to be chided by Mr Rabbani over what the PPP sees as a line from the so-called ‘establishment’.

Mr Rabbani wondered how the pro-Musharraf camp could see a threat to nuclear assets from a UN inquiry commission about Ms Bhutto’s assassination while they kept quiet when president himself ‘registered an FIR’ against the country’s nuclear programme by admitting that nuclear proliferation had taken place from here and proceeding against nuclear scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan.

Mr Syed, who chairs the Senate Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, accused the foreign office of following a ‘doctrine of necessity’ vis-a-vis ties with Washington and said Islamabad should not accept American attacks into Pakistani territory from Afghanistan.

He advised the government to make use of the next six months to pursue President Musharraf’s initiatives for a settlement of the Kashmir dispute before the present Indian government becomes preoccupied with the next elections.

Jamaat-i-Islami parliamentary leader Prof Khurshid Ahmed, whose party sits on opposition benches though its main ally in the now divided Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) alliance, the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F, has joined the coalition government, strongly pleaded for Pakistan’s withdrawal from the US-led coalition, a review of what he saw as a policy of compromise over Kashmir and the Middle East and for strengthening political and economic ties with ‘trusted friend’ China.

JUI-F’s Khalid Mahmood Soomro, in the most high-pitched speech from a ruling coalition partner, accused President Musharraf of turning Pakistan ‘practically into a colony of America’ and asked the government to learn a lesson from neighbouring Iran to follow an independent foreign policy and ‘put an end to the murder of innocent people’.

Government ally Awami National Party’s Mohammad Adeel blamed the policies of military governments for what he called Pashtuns killing Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan and called for changes in both the foreign and domestic policies to put an end to this process.

Pashtunkhawa Milli Awami party’s Abdul Rahim Mandokhel came out as the strongest critic of militants and their sponsors whose activities, he said, sought to impose their will on other people by force of arms and invited hot pursuit by Nato and US forces operating in Afghanistan.

PML’s most senior parliamentarian Chaudhry Mohammad Anwar Bhinder said the opinion of parliament members, rather than the foreign office alone, should form the basis of foreign policy and suggested a foreign policy statement by the foreign minister every month in both houses of parliament and regular foreign policy debates there after every four months.