PESHAWAR, April 8: Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rehman has said Chief of Army Staff Gen Pervez Musharraf cannot address the joint sitting of parliament.

Briefing newsmen after a three-day session of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam’s general working council in Nowshera on Tuesday, Maulana Fazlur Rahman said Gen Musharaff was an unconstitutional president and he could not address the elected parliament.”

Hitting hard at the Frontier Corps in the NWFP and the Pakistan Coast Guards in Balochistan he said the JUI council had urged the federal government to keep them within the limits of their camps in the NWFP and Balochistan. He said both the forces had earned an anti-people image in the two provinces.

The forces, he said, which were supposed to curb smuggling, had killed ordinary people in different parts of Balochistan. He urged the federal government to take notice of the people’s suffering in both the provinces.

The JUI council, he said, endorsed the MMA stand on the Legal Framework Order and termed it in accordance with democratic norms and reflection of people’s aspirations. He denied that they were ready to accept the dual status of Gen Musharraf as president and COAS. “We have conveyed to the PML-Q that we will show flexibility on other parts of the LFO if Gen Musharraf is ready to quit as COAS”, he added.

Maulana said the National Accountability Bureau was mere a tool of blackmailing the politicians and had nothing to do with across the board accountability. The NAB had been used to produce a bunch of loyals in the form of PML-Q and others who were supporting Gen Musharraf, he added.

He said the NAB didn’t grill any general and bureaucrat for their corruption, he maintained.

He said the JUI council had condemned the invasion of Iraq by the US-UK forces and demanded the UN Security Council to strip the America of being a veto power. The council said that the one-sided war in Iraq was a violation of the UN charter and Security Council secretary-general Kofi Annan should immediately resign as he failed to resolve the Middle East crisis, he added.

The council urged the government to adopt an independent and free from US-influence foreign policy and condemn the invasion of Iraq by the Anglo-American forces. He said that the senate had failed to condemn the aggression on Iraq as the government did not want to annoy the US, he added.

The JUI council urged the government not to make encroachment upon the provincial rights in the name of local bodies and police reforms. All rights of provinces should be transferred to them for the betterment of their people, he added.

The JUI council, he said, congratulated the NWFP government for its efforts for the Islamization of laws and hopes it would bring drastic changes in the society.

He said the US aggression had provided a pretext to bigger countries to invade smaller ones. “We cannot expect any good from India. We are aware of its aggressive designs”, he added.

Replying to a question, he said the US had trained the Arab guerillas in Afghanistan, who were now challenging it as the suicide bombers in Iraq. Commenting on quashment of one billion dollars loan by the US, he said America had paid compensation for Taliban’s killings.