ISLAMABAD, Sept 20: President Asif Ali Zardari asked parliament on Saturday to review the autocratic powers of his newly won office but preferred ambiguity about the extent of a possible curtailment and sidestepped the issue of reinstating deposed judges in a move that did not seem to help his damaged credibility.

In his maiden address to a joint session of the two houses of parliament 11 days after taking office, he proposed that a committee of all parties “revisit” the Constitution’s controversial 17th Amendment and Article 58(2)b through which former president Musharraf assumed sweeping powers to undermine the parliamentary system of government.

“As the democratically elected president of Pakistan I call upon the parliament to form an all parties committee to revisit the Seventeenth Amendment and article 58(2)b,” Mr Zardari said and added: “Never before in history of the country has a president stood here and given his powers.”

But the president’s use of the equivocal word “revisit” rather than calling for a categorical repeal of the objectionable articles as repeatedly promised by his Pakistan People’s Party and the main opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif created doubts about how far the committee would be able to go in recommending changes.

While the PML-N, some other opposition groups and legal and rights activists seemed outraged by lack of a clear-cut stand in the president’s address on the constitutional amendments and the judiciary, PPP ally Awami National Party was overjoyed by his disclosure that he had recommended to the government to “change” the name of the North West Frontier Province to “Pukhtunkhwa” — that can be done also through a constitutional amendment — in response to what he called “the long-standing demand of the people of the province”.

He said the people of the federally-ruled Northern Areas — which form part of the disputed Jammu and Kashmir state but have no representation either in the Azad Kashmir Legislative Assembly or Pakistan’s parliament — “must also get their basic rights, representative rule and an independent judiciary”.

The remainder of the president’s 22-minute English language speech was mainly a reiteration of the domestic and foreign policies of the PPP-led coalition government whose advent five and a half months ago following the February 18 elections, he said, had finally restored democracy in Pakistan.

But, speaking hours before a deadly truck-bomb attack at the nearby Marriott Hotel, he said it was “still a tender sapling which needs nurturing before it become a great sheltering tree” while there were elements who wanted to derail the process once again.

He urged the people to remain vigilant against such elements and asked parliamentarians to “join hands and work together in harmony, not in discord,” to realise the people’s “great hopes and expectations”.

“We need to banish forever the politics of destruction and confrontation,” he told the members of the 342-seat National Assembly and 100-seat Senate in their first such joint session after more than four-and-a-half years.

President Musharraf then made his first and last address to such a session in January 2004 amid the opposition’s ‘Go Musharraf, Go’ chants, whose scare did not allow him to appear before parliament again to fulfil a constitutional obligation.

Among those who watched the proceedings from the galleries were former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, provincial governors and chief ministers, armed forces chiefs, and foreign diplomats. President Zardari, who said he had been given his present honour in the name of his assassinated wife and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, told parliament that he had “a dream for Pakistan” to free the country from “the shackles of poverty, hunger, terrorism and disunity”.

Talking about national security, he asked the government to hold “a national security briefing”, or an in-camera briefing to a joint session of parliament and said: “We will not tolerate the violation of our sovereignty and territorial integrity by any power in the name of combating terrorism.”

Stressing the need for peace inside Pakistan as well as in its neighbourhood, the president said he had invited his Afghan counterpart Hamid Karzai to his oath-taking on Sept 9 as “a mark of Pakistan’s sincere desire and consistent efforts to promote close relations and strengthen cooperation with the brotherly county of Afghanistan”.

He said the government also believed that relations between Pakistan and India “can and should be creatively reinvented”, for which Islamabad had decided to resume the “composite dialogue process” with New Delhi.

The president also reaffirmed “our complete commitment to the Kashmiri people in their just struggle for the restoration of their fundamental rights” and said: “We will continue to seek the settlement of all outstanding disputes, including the dispute over Jammu and Kashmir, so that the main hurdle in the way towards peace and full normalisation of relations between Pakistan and India is removed.” He urged parliament to form a bipartisan caucus for the purpose of resolving outstanding disputes with India relating to Kashmir and the Indus water headworks. But he made no mention of Pakistan’s traditional stand about the Kashmiri people’s right to self-determination or the UN resolutions on the matter.

Talking of relations with other counties, the president said the present government would endeavour to “promote regional and international peace and security as well as economic and social development of our people”.

“Our foreign policy would be geared to not only defence of territorial integrity and sovereignty (of Pakistan) but also promotion of (its) commercial and economic interests,” he said. The president said Pakistan could position itself as “the trade and energy hub” for South and Central Asia. “We will strengthen our brotherly relations with Iran and take our time-tested and all-weather friendship and strategic partnership with China to greater heights,” he said.

“With the United States and European partners, we will endeavour to build a long-term partnership that is broad-based and mutually beneficial.”

The president reiterated Pakistan’s support for the “Palestinian cause of self-determination” and said: “We value our ties with Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Libya. We will rejuvenate our relations with the Arab League, the OIC, and Asean to promote bilateral trade and investment.

“With the Islamic and Arab countries we enjoy excellent relations. We will further develop our friendship with the countries of Asia, Latin America and Africa.”