ALTAF HUSSAIN EXPRESSES SURPRISE AND DISILLUSIONMENT AT THE RESPONSE OF THE COAS

London: August 28, 1998

Altaf Hussain, the founder leader of the MQM, said that he had seen a press report issued by the ISPR attributing a statement to the Chief of Army Staff issued from Beijing. He said that it was astonishing that now General Jehangir Karamat was saying that American attack on Afghanistan was carried out without prior information to the Pakistani authorities, whereas, he himself said barely couple of days ago that the Armed Forces had indeed conveyed this information to the Prime Minister. The inability of the Pakistani army authorities to understand the reasons for the presence of General Rolstan in Pakistan at the time of the attack is also baffling since it shows that our strategic thinking in the relevant quarters lacks that quality and calibre which is necessary for those whose sacred task is to defend the motherland. Still, Altaf Hussain asked, that General Jehangir Karamat had conspicuously not divulged the exact sequence of events since the detection of American warships near our waters to the time of the actual attack. It is necessary for the country to know these matters since they concern issues of vital security interest. He also expressed his disillusionment at the innuendo and veiled threats contained in the statement of COAS that those patriotic elements in Pakistan who were trying to unravel the above sequence of events to locate the identity of those State functionaries who had apparently utterly failed to perform their sacred duty of the defense of the realm were to be taken to task. Mr. Altaf Hussain said that such threats negated the very essence of democracy since freedom of thought and expression is not only contained in Article 19 of the Constitution, it is a universally accepted norm of democracy and freedom. Indeed, it is the duty of the press and political leadership of the country to find out the truth of these matters since the inability of our Government and Forces to act in time in the face of a certain attack is most disconcerting to the citizens of the country. As such, he hoped and requested the relevant Army authorities to fully reveal to the public the actual events relating to this alarming incident in which there appears to have occurred serious lapses of defensive security actions and planning. Mr. Altaf Hussain was also puzzled to learn in the press reports of today that another unexploded American missile had been found in the deserts of village Balktar, District Turbat in Balochistan. The inability of our guardians of security to know these things in time has raised serious misgivings in the mind of the people who have a right to know from the Chief of Army Staff and the Prime Minister what exactly did the Government do during this period of serious crisis for the country.