Senate to debate controversial memogate on December 2

Senate to debate controversial memogate on December 2

The Senate is all set to discuss the issue of controversial memogate as Chairman Senate Farooq H. Naek Tuesday summoned the Upper House’s session, on December 2, on the requisition submitted by the joint opposition to discuss the matter.

The 75^th session of the Senate will continue only for two days and one-point agenda will be the memogate allegedly written by Pakistan’s Ambassador to United States, Hussain Haqqani, to the American administration on the behalf of President Asif
Ali Zardari.

The controversy erupted on October 10, when a Pakistani origin US businessman Mansoor Ijaz wrote an article in the Financial Times, claiming he had served a memorandum to the US administration setting out President Asif Zardari’s plea for US, backing in
a confrontation with the military.

According to the memogate, Asif Ali Zardari warned US about Pakistan Army and sought her assistance against a possible military takeover. The memo was addressed to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Mike Mullen.

Pakistan Army is showing harsh reaction over the issue and had asked the political leadership to investigate the matter and bring out the facts regarding the memo.

On the other hand, Hussain Haqqani is in Islamabad these days after being summoned by the president to explain his position about the memo.

After explaining his position before the president, Prime Minister, army chief and other top political and military leadership, he tendered his resignation on demand of the premier.

Haqqani, however, denied these reports and his primary defence is that the note is unsigned and unverified.

Meanwhile Mullen’s office said that they received a memo, but did not give it too much credence at the time, as it was unsigned.

Earlier on Friday, 29 opposition senators of various parties including PML-N, PML-Q, and Jamat-e-Islami had submitted a joint requisition in the Senate Secretariat to discuss the issue. According to rules, the government was bound to summon the session within
14 days.

As the matter is going to be echoed in the upper house of the parliament, opposition parties are all set to give the government tough time and make some political scoring over the issue.

Opposition members said that issue could not be left unnoticed by the parliament even though it is under trial.

Opposition parties will demand for referring the matter to the Senate’s Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs. However, the ruling party will try to convince the opposition to stay away from the issue until it investigates by countries’ top leadership.

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Posted by Faisal Farooq on Nov 22 2011. Filed under Pakistan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry