PPP leader accuses army generals of corruption

The Pakistan People's Party, virtually at war with the military in Pakistan, claimed yesterday that top echelons of the army had been involved in a land allotment scandal and had even changed the rules to favour some of the senior generals. The charge was levelled by the party's former interior minister General Naseerullah Babar who said in a statement that he treated the army as an institution of great esteem and wanted it to grow in strength and stature in public eye. Unfortunately, he felt that some of the senior officers of the ranks of generals had subverted the rules to involve themselves in a land allotment scandal in Sindh.

Babar, hailing from the NWFP, alleged that the army had been involved in corrupt practices.He cited the distribution of money, taken from banks, for distribution among politicians to subvert the electoral process. He refrained from identifying the persons responsible for that, but former air force chief Air Marshal Asghar Khan has gone to the Supreme Court to demand enquiry into the charge levelled against the ex-army chief General Mirza Aslam Beg.

Gen. Babar recalled that an official report had recently thrown light on the kickbacks and commissions received by army officers. He said the army, in power now, had been chasing the politicians on a selective basis for their alleged misdeeds and corruption in public life, but had conveniently forgotten that its own senior staff was involved in scandals. Babar said that he had broken his silence after a great deal of hesitation because public should know that army generals had altered the set rules to get prize lands allotted to them in Sindh.