ISLAMABAD: Interior Minister Rehman Malik told the National Assembly on Friday the government was in possession of the blueprint of a conspiracy to break up Pakistan, starting with Balochistan province, but that the plot was foiled by the country's armed forces.

He did not say who hatched the conspiracy but offered an in-camera briefing to the house after an opposition lawmaker from Balochistan complained of a continuous “lifting” and “extra-judicial killing” of students in his troubled province that he said must be stopped.

On a day he also furiously rejected a ruling party member's allegation — made in an apparent party indiscipline — relating to a deadly shootout in Lahore on Thursday involving a US mission employee, Mr Malik returned to his seat after he seemed to be leaving the house for the day in response to PML-N member Abdul Qadir Baloch's urging to be heard by the minister.

Mr Malik said he agreed with Mr Baloch that “people are being lifted and killed”, but added: “We must see who is doing it. The government is not doing it. It is BLA,” he said about the so-called Balochistan Liberation Army, a militant group allegedly seeking a separation of the province.

“Whoever hatched the conspiracy to break up the country, Balochistan was on top of (of the plan),” the minister said in his remarks in Urdu and added that “thanks to the armed forces” the plot did not succeed.

“We have a blueprint in our hands of what the conspiracy was,” he said, without elaborating.

The PML-N member, a retired army lietenant-general and former a corps commander in Balochistan, said students were being “picked up every day” in his province and then their bodies dropped somewhere.

He said a woman in his province recently called by telephone to tell him that her only son had been picked up and she did not know about his fate.

The member did not say who was doing it but seemed to be pointing his finger at security agencies when he said: “This extra-judicial killing must be stopped and anybody accused of any crime be tried in a court of law and may be hanged if found guilty.”

Earlier, the Lahore shootout and the latest in a series of incidents of perceived indiscipline in the PPP echoed together in the house.

The interior minister rejected what he called a “a totally wrong allegation” by PPP member Noor Alam from Peshawar that he had asked the Lahore police by telephone to release the US consulate-general employee, Raymond David, who allegedly shot dead two young motorcyclists in what the American is reported to have called an act of self-defence.

Mr Malik demanded that either his party member withdraw his remarks or a house committee be formed to probe the allegation, which the member made while raising the issue on a point or order even after being told by Deputy Speaker Faisal Karim Kundi that the minister would make a statement on the incident.

Mr Alam, who had left the house after making his allegation, came back after a while to say that he had “all the respect” for Mr Malik and that he hoped the minister would have the Lahore incident investigated properly, but stopped short of formally saying he was withdrawing his allegation.

But the chair took Mr Alam's remarks as a retraction of his earlier outburst, and the minister too nodded in agreement to put to an end to an embarrassing argument, which appeared to show that some recent actions by the party leadership to discipline its members -- sacking of a federal minister, an intended sacking of a minister of state who was later spared and earlier suspension of some senior members of the central committee -- had not been a full success.

Mr Malik said the Lahore incident was a provincial matter, which he hoped provincial Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, whom he called a good administrator, would ensure to be properly investigated.

However, the minister said the US consulate employee had told police that he fired from his pistol at the two motorcyclists in self-defence after they pulled up to the right of his car on a Lahore road and then to his left and one of them drew a gun at him.