HYDERABAD, Nov 16: Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-Fazl Senator Dr Khalid Mehmood Soomro took a fresh swipe at the media on Sunday and said that his party had decided to file defamation case against purported media trial of Maulana Fazlur Rehman.

Addressing a news conference here, Mr Soomro accused the ANP of being behind the media trial of his leader and said that land in the NWFP had been allotted to 1,000 people but a journalist had only pinpointed 10 persons, which indicated his mala fide intension.

He said that land was allotted in other provinces also but that had been ignored and forgotten. The land allotted in the NWFP had been cancelled by the JUI chief minister Mr Akram Durrani, he claimed.

He wondered that the media took no notice of 15,000 acres of land on both sides of the Super Highway between Karachi and Hyderabad which was allotted to different parties.

Mr Soomro said that the government had arrested a handful of money-changers who were being shown to people as criminals though there were thousands of Hundi operators in Karachi but the authorities had failed to take any action against them.

He said that the government had failed to fulfil the promises it had made to his party, which had reached an understanding on the basis that the government would reject dictates of the US, stop massacre of innocent people in the northern areas, solve all the contentious issue through dialogue and discard the policies of Pervez Musharraf.

But the government was still following Musharraf regime’s policies. The US forces had made only 32 attacks in the northern areas during the Musharraf rule while they had violated territorial limits of Pakistan on 36 occasions during the first eight months of the present government, he said.

He said that his party had demanded that Musharraf and Shaukat Aziz should be tried for stashing away billions of dollars in foreign banks and committing atrocities in Lal Masjid and Jamia Hafsa but instead the government gave both a free passage.

Referring to Hina Rabbani Khar, Dr Soomro said that the present government had appointed a woman minister who was also a minister in the previous government.

He called the IMF as the ‘International Museebat and Fitna’ and said that the government had doubled its problems by taking loan from the bank.

The senator supported demands of the businessmen for the import of duty free generators and reduction in mark-up and taxes. If the industrialists were ready to generate electricity to operate factories due to power crisis and were also prepared to supply it to adjoining areas at cheaper rates, there was no reason why their demand should not be accepted, he asked.

He said that practice of usury was prohibited in Islam but if it could not be abolished its rate should at least be brought down as demanded by the business community.

He said that the business community had promised to double the number of industrial units in five years if their demands were accepted.

Despite the fact that the country in the grip of economic crisis an army of ministers had been inducted into the government while a brigade had been taken to Saudi Arabia, the senator said.

He described the proposed privatisation of Qadirpur gas field as ‘simply shameful’ and said that the government was disposing of the gas field at $3 billion, whose assets value was estimated at $12 billion besides millions of rupees profit it was earning for the national exchequer every day.

He welcomed the prime minister’s statement that the gas field would not be privatised. But a recent statement by the finance and privatisation minister that a consensus would be developed on the issue, had once again created ambiguity, he said, adding that the prime minister should issue an unequivocal clarification on the gas field.

He condemned the murder of three JUI supporters in Pannu Akil and demanded immediate arrest of their killers.