The 266th monthly meeting of the Islamabad Scientists' Club was aborted on Saturday. Only four persons turned up at the meeting, including the ISC President Engineer Tariq Majeed, Brigadier Karim, chief of the hot balloons flying squad, the guest speaker, scheduled to give an overview of the progress of ISO certification progress undertaken under the auspices of Ministry of Science and Technology.
This reporter was the fourth person to reach the venue after much trouble. He was passed up from one no go (Curfew) area to another by security courteous personnel. They would listen but would not yield in giving way to the cab in which he was travelling.This makes a record for the Club. It has not until today failed in convening its monthly meetings on the first Saturday of every month when surgeon Rashid Khan was the president.
The meeting on Saturday was the first called by the new President who took over last month, but he could not make a success of it because one of the Club Members, otherwise enthusiastic. This fact underlines the tension that the people of the federal capital are undergoing since the past five days after the start of Lal Masjid operations. It has flayed the nerves of the residents of the federal capital and Rawalpindi, who now want the operation to be brought to final and logical conclusion.
Until now the government has been saying that it was in no hurry for the sake of the safety of women and children who it said had been made hostage by the hardened militant male students, and it has made innumerable appeals to Rashid Ghazi to release women and children.
Only Rashid Ghazi's ire stood in the way for ending of the problem, proves what a heartless man he should be for using girls and very small children as a human shield, as say a number of reports.
A few minutes ago he told the Media he would not yield and was prepared to go on in this for another month. He had food provisions and enough firepower to last that long. Two nights ago he went back on the promise made to several TV talk show anchorpersons that he was prepared to come out without guns and surrender.
However, during the past three days the government earned kudos from the public for smooth handling the crisis. People used to call TV channels blaming cleric Rasheed Ghazi for his unyielding position.
However, with the entry of Maulana Abdul Aziz, the chief cleric who donned a burqa to get out of the fortified sanctuary probably messed up the situation and we are listening to views from a number of Ulemas who have begun to blame the government for not showing flexibility.
A number of MNAs, including lady MNAs are also appealing the government to soften its attitude. They want to go in with food and medicine but the security officials said it would be quite a risk, and they were turned away from near the Lal Masjid this morning. Later, the government said these MNAs could now go inside.
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