By KUNA,
Islamabad : The Joint session of the Pakistani Parliament is meeting here later on Wednesday to discuss in-camera session where politicians will be briefed on the secrets of anti-terrorism strategy amid rising insurgency which is mainly targeted at the politicians and security forces.
The Joint session of the parliament will begin later on Wednesday and the Prime Minister held meeting with Information and Law ministers and the Attorney General to discuss the matters relating to the in-camera Joint session of Parliament.
According to press reports, in the rare in-camera joint sitting of the two houses of the parliament, an army general will brief members on the anti-terrorism strategy and could also answer their questions before a likely rounding up speech by Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani.
They said the session has been arranged in response to consistent opposition criticism of the six-month-old democratically elected government’s handling of the militancy and terrorism. There was no official word about its duration but official sources told KUNA that the briefing is going to be detailed and could last two to three days.
A local Dawn newspaper said that the military will share with politicians, secrets about why “blood is flowing with such abandon in a messy war that neither side seems winning.” But given a tradition of distrust between the generals and the politicians, it said, the whole truth about Pakistan’s role in the so-called “war on terrorism?” may not be told in only the third such secret sitting of the National Assembly and Senate in Pakistan’s parliamentary history.
Parliamentary groups of the ruling coalition led by the Pakistan People’s Party and opposition parties will hold their own separate meetings afterwards to plan their line of action.
For the first time in 20 years, the press gallery will be empty during a parliamentary sitting, making it a political elite affair whose story will be sought to be told through the jargon of an official press release, said Dawn.