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Pakistan Parties Ask Annan
to Resign Over Iraq “The UN secretary-general should immediately resign by accepting his ineffective role in stopping the war in Iraq,” Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani, chief of six-parties religious alliance of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) told reporters in Islamabad.
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ISLAMABAD, 10 April 2003 — Accusing the United Nations Secretary-General
Kofi Annan of failing to play his role in ending war in Iraq, the
Pakistan’s religious parties yesterday asked him to quit his office.
“The UN secretary-general should immediately resign by accepting his ineffective role in stopping the war in Iraq,” Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani, chief of six-parties religious alliance of Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) told reporters in Islamabad. MMA had been leading massive anti-war rallies in major urban cities of Pakistan and was also in the forefront of condemning the US-led military strikes in Afghanistan that removed the Al-Qaeda terrorist network and the radical Taleban government in 2001. Noorani said the MMA leadership condemned the United States for the attack on Iraq in which “thousands of innocent people lost their lives.” He termed the war “a move by the US against the independence of a country just to capture its resources.” The MMA leader announced to hold another “Million March” in the country’s southwestern city of Hyderabad on April 14 and similar protest rally in the city of Jacobabad in the Sindh province where the US forces are using a military air base facility for its non-combatant operations in Afghanistan. Pakistan is a key ally of the US in its war on so-called international terrorism but has refused to support the attack on Iraq. Several Pakistani groups have launched campaigns to boycott products from the United States and Britain to protest the attack on Iraq. Religious groups have earlier warned US and British interests would be targeted across the country in anti-war protests.
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