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MQM blames Opposition for Karachi violence

Nirupama Subramanian

— PHOTO: AP

BURNING ANGER: Activists of a Pakistan Opposition party burn an effigy of President Pervez Musharraf at an anti-Government rally in Multan on Sunday.

KARACHI: A day after Pakistan's biggest city witnessed bloody clashes between rival political forces, the pro-Musharraf Muttahida Qaumi Movement said it had anticipated the violence but "reluctantly" decided to hold a competing rally on the same day as a planned march by the Opposition and lawyers supporting ousted Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhary.

The violence killed as many as 34 persons and left over 150 injured, and had not abated even by Sunday afternoon, and has drawn the political lines of the ongoing crisis over the ouster of the Chief Justice more firmly.

"We just wanted to establish that there is a voice that is opposed to the political intrigues going on behind the Chief Justice's campaign," said Farooq Sattar, a parliamentarian of the MQM and deputy convenor of its executive council.

"And I think we succeeded in doing that," Mr. Sattar said in a conversation with The Hindu at Nine Zero, the party's fortified headquarters in Karachi, the name deriving from the last two digits of its phone number.

Addressing a massive rally in Islamabad put together by the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) on Saturday, President Pervez Musharraf described he agitation for the Chief Justice as "unreasonable" and said the pro-Government showing in the capital and in Karachi was a clear demonstration of support for him and his policies.

Charges denied

Mr. Sattar vehemently dismissed the suggestion that as the most powerful political force in the city, which also holds the Interior portfolio in the Sindh ruling coalition, his party was responsible for triggering the clashes and the Government's inability to control the violence.

Instead, he blamed the Opposition for sparking the violence by refusing to heed the Sindh Government's advice to postpone its programme in the city, and a scheduled address by Mr. Chaudhary to the Sindh High Court Bar Association. Mr. Chaudhary arrived in Karachi at noon on Saturday but could not leave the airport on account of the violence and the blockades in the city.

He returned to Islamabad late at night with his entourage of lawyers.

The MQM leader claimed the Opposition parties realised they would not be able to mobilise people to rally in support of Mr. Chaudhary, "so, instead of organising rallies, they diverted their energies to disrupting the tranquillity of Karachi.

"We did not see any rallies by the Opposition. Where was the Jamaat-e-Islami, the second largest party in Karachi?" he said.

Denying the MQM had immobilised the Opposition by sealing the city to prevent a show of strength by the Chief Justice, Mr. Sattar said the Government and the law-enforcing agencies had placed a few blockades near the airport and at the High Court for Mr. Chaudhary's security but otherwise, the city was "open".

A perception has gained ground in the last week that the MQM, a party that represents Urdu-speaking migrants from India, put up a show of strength for the President because he belongs to the same ethnic group.

But Mr. Sattar denied this, and said it was the Opposition that reopened Karachi's ethnic faultlines by pitching Pashtuns against Urdu-speakers in the confrontation.

The violence included gun-battles in several places between supporters of the MQM and Opposition parties, mainly the Awami National Party and the Pakhtun Action Committee that represent Pashtuns, who are a significant force in Karachi.

The MQM supported Gen. Musharraf only for his broad agenda of a liberal, secular Pakistan, but was against military rule, Mr. Sattar said.

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