Nawaz and Benazir to discuss plans for mass resignation of lawmakers 'Army did not intend to kill Bugti'

Lahore: Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) leader Nawaz Sharif is expected to hold a crucial meeting in the next few days with Pakistan Peoples Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto.

They will discuss the proposed en masse resignation by the opposition members from parliament as well as the provincial assemblies to protest the killing of Baloch nationalist leader Nawab Akbar Khan Bugti.

According to PML-N insiders, Sharif thinks the mainstream opposition parties PPP, PML and Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) should quit the assemblies and launch a countrywide agitation seeking the resignation of General Pervez Musharraf as president and army chief.

The sources said that a consensus had been reached on tendering resignations during a meeting of the leaders of Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and MMA which was held at the Islamabad residence of PML-N acting Parliamentary leader Nisar Ali Khan.

Approval

However, the PML sources said that during the same meeting, senior PPP vice-chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim had expressed his inability to give a final decision about the resignations without obtaining Benazir's approval.

Soon after the Islamabad meeting, Makhdoom left the country to meet Benazir and to seek her guidance on the issue of the resignations.

The PML sources said that since Benazir was hesitant to tender resignations for the time being, Sharif has decided to meet her and pursue the issue of resignations.

Benazir has apparently not taken a public position on the military operation in Balochistan. She had ta-ken almost a week to condemn the killing of Bugti.

While MMA is set to hold its supreme council meeting in the current week to take a final decision on quitting the assemblies, the elected members of the Balochistan National Party have already submitted their resignations from Parliament and the provincial and district assemblies of the trouble stricken province.

Islamabad (AP) A Pakistani government spokesman insisted that security forces did not intend to kill a tribal chieftain whose death in an unexplained explosion has fuelled unrest in southern Pakistan.

Nawab Akbar Bugti died on August 26 when his remote cave hide-out collapsed in an unexplained explosion while security forces were operating in the mountainous area.

Bugti, 79, had led an often-violent push for more development for the people of his impoverished southwestern province, Balochistan.

Tariq Azeem Khan, Pakistan's minister of state for information, said on Monday that "law enforcement agencies" had been searching in Bugti's area for trucks suspected of smuggling in weapons across the nearby Afghan border.

When they saw "a lot of activity" near a cave and were told Bugti was inside, they sent personnel in to investigate, Khan said at a news conference.

He dismissed accounts that a missile or chemical weapons had been used against Bugti, causing the explosion that crushed him and a still-uncertain number of his supporters and security forces.

"Nobody would be silly enough to send officials inside, and then start shooting at them," he said.

Khan said the cause of the blast was still unknown and was being investigated.

His remarks came as Bugti's death widely believed to be a covered-up government act of stifling dissidence and the government's refusal to hand over his body to his family have been causing rapidly spreading suspicion and criticism among many Pakistanis.

Volatile

Furious protests have left several people dead and dozens injured across intensely volatile Balochistan.

Other Pakistanis have also become increasingly critical of the way the situation was handled.

"The distressing events following the death of ... Bugti have created an environment of distrust between the government and the rest of Pakistan," security analyst and political commentator Nasim Zehra wrote in a column published Monday in the nationally circulated English-language newspaper.

Hours before Khan's news conference, Sandra Akhtar Mengal, head of the minor opposition Balochistan National Party, said he had asked four lawmakers to vacate their assembly posts in protest of Bugti's killing.