KARACHI, 20 March 2006 — The Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) will contest elections in 2007 from all constituencies in Pakistan and Azad Kashmir, its leader Altaf Hussain said yesterday.
Addressing a gathering of MQM supporters on telephone from London, Altaf urged the government to resolve the dispute in Balochistan through dialogue.
He said Muttahida was not against privatization of state units but privatization should not render workers jobless. He was referring to the privatization of Habib Bank and the sacking of workers from the bank.
He said his party would lodge a strong protest if workers were made jobless.
Altaf said that the amount of loan should be distributed equally among earthquake victims in Azad Kashmir.
He said that Sindhi nationalists were spreading propaganda against the anti-encroachment drive launched in Karachi. The drive, he said, was aimed against land grabbers and would not affect legal residents. He said it was not against Sindhis only. He referred to the operation in North Nazimabad, Karachi, where most of the people affected belonged to the Urdu-speaking community.
Altaf said the MQM had never compromised on the NFC award and other Sindh issues. It was the party, he said, which had raised a voice for a just NFC award. He said that the Sindhi people would foil all the conspiracies of the establishment that seeks to drive a wedge between Sindhis and non-Sindhis.
He announced that the year 2006 would be celebrated as the Shah Latif year and announced that a big conference would be held in this connection.
He said that the MQM would hold a public meeting in the interior of Sindh to show that the people of Sindh were with the MQM. Altaf said whenever he would come to Pakistan he would pass the same amount of time in the interior of Sindh as in urban Sindh. He strongly criticized religious parties and said they were using religion for their vested interests.
