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Thursday, July 18, 2013
Senate body demands making public of Abbottabad commission report* Defence committee reveals commission’s report was not a consensus
document as one of its members wrote a dissenting noteStaff Report
ISLAMABAD: The Abbottabad commission’s report was not a consensus document as one member of the committee, Jahangir Ashraf Qazi, wrote a 40-page dissenting note, the Senate Standing Committee of Defence and Defence Productions disclosed on Wednesday.
The committee discussed the leakage of the Abbottabad commission’s report to foreign media and demanded the government make public, in a formal and official manner, the contents of the commission’s report and place it before parliament for debate and discussion. However, the revelation by the defence committee that Jahangir Ashraf Qazi, a member of the committee, wrote a 40-page dissenting note suggests that the findings of the report were not based on consensus.
Committee Chairman Senator Mushahid Hussain Sayed told the media after the committee’s meeting outside the Parliament House that the report and the 40-page note of dissent by Qazi should be made public.
He said that taking note of the Abbottabad commission’s report, the committee has decided to hold a public hearing on “Intelligence Reform and Re-organisation” soon after Eid and it would prepare its own recommendations regarding national security and counter-terror strategy after thorough deliberation of the contents of the report by the commission.
The committee also stated in categorical terms that in the context of the Abbottabad commission’s report, there should not be any blame game or fingerpointing against individuals or institutions, rather the endeavour should be to examine the causes of what the commission has called was a “collective failure” and to ensure that wrongs are reversed so that such failures do not recur.
The members of the committee also expressed concern over the induction of a controversial individual as the head of the newly created Aviation Division. The inductee’s credentials as a citizen of Pakistan have been questioned by the Supreme Court.
Taking up the issue after media reports in this regard, the Senate Defence Committee also expressed its disquiet over allegations of a conflict of interest involved in creating the Aviation Division after its separation from the Ministry of Defence.
The concern will be addressed through the Ministry of Defence and conveyed to the prime minister since he also happens to be the defence minister. On the suggestion of Senator Sehar Kamran, the committee passed a resolution lauding the role of female paratroopers in the Pakistan armed forces and termed this as a “positive step forward in promoting gender equality within the armed forces and good for nation building, since women will now be playing an active role, shoulder to shoulder, with the men in defending the motherland”.
Courtesy www.dailytimes.com.pk