The announcement by the Islamist party Jamiat Ulema Islam leaves the coalition with just a small majority in the National Assembly and threatens the stability of the weak civilian government whose cooperation is critical to America’s efforts in neighboring Afghanistan.
The party’s leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, said it was leaving because one of its ministers was fired after a scandal involving government organized pilgrimages to Saudi Arabia.
“JUI is leaving the government from today ... our decision is final,” Rehman said.
The move will leave President Asif Ali Zardari’s government with less leverage to push through key legislation. The JUI, for instance, said it will oppose a plan to pass a new sales tax that the government says would bring much needed revenue to the cash-strapped nation.
Still, Farahnaz Ispahani, an aide to Zardari and spokeswoman for the Pakistan People’s Party, said the government was unfazed by the defection.
“With JUI quitting the sky is not falling, the government majority is there,” she said.
Another Zardari aide, however, said he met with Rehman shortly after his announcement and was hopeful that JUI would remain in the government.
“JUI is our allied party and we will not let them go,” Qayyum Soomro said.
Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani fired two members of the Cabinet on Tuesday over the pilgrimage scandal. One was the religious affairs minister and the other, a member of JUI heading the ministry for science and technology.
Azam Khan Swati of the JUI accused Religious Affairs Minister Hamid Saeed Kazmi of corruption in the cases of the pilgrimages, sparking a federal investigation.
Gilani asked the two to cease their bickering, and then fired both, angering the JUI.
Meanwhile, a suspected US missile strike killed four militants Tuesday in a tribal region near the Afghan border, Pakistani intelligence officials said.
The missiles hit a vehicle believed to be carrying the four from North Waziristan’s main town of Miran Shah to Tappi, an area surrounded by mountains, the two officials said, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.
The identities of the dead were not immediately known.
Information from the tribal region is difficult to verify independently because access to the area is restricted and, due to the prevalence of militant groups there, security is tenuous at best.
North Waziristan has been the focus of nearly all of the 100 or so US missile strikes that have landed in Pakistan this year. Unlike other parts of the northwest, Pakistan’s army has yet to wage an offensive against militants in North Waziristan.
Pakistan protests the missile strikes publicly but is believed to secretly support them. The US rarely discusses the covert, CIA-run program.
Recently a group of tribesmen hailing from North Waziristan have threatened to sue the US unless families of civilians killed or wounded by the missile strikes are compensated. Supporters of the program insist, however, that most of the strikes are accurate and kill only militants.
