SIALKOT - Federal Information and Broadcasting Minister Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan has said that President Asif Zardari’s visit to India will be fruitful and pave the way for the establishment of lasting peace in the Subcontinent.
The minister stated this while talking to the newsmen here Sunday. Dr Firdous said that Pakistani government wanted better relations with its neighbouring countries that’s why the government had embarked upon the process for the resolution of all core issues including Kashmir Issue with India through the resumption of dialogue.
The information minister said that Indian Prime Minister Dr Manmohan Singh had also accepted President Zardari’s invitation to visit Pakistan for further cementing the bilateral ties.
Dr Firdous appealed to the masses to reject all the “turncoats” who had changed loyalties for their vested interest. Politicians who have switch over loyalties against the aspirations of their voters and supporters have actually trampled the mandate the masses have posed among them and such politicians do not deserve to be re-elected,” she argued, adding that such politicians were trying to swim across the ocean of politics by getting into the boat of faithlessness, after dodging the innocent people.
She said that Prime Minister Syed Yousuf Raza Gilani had taken a bold and big step of holding a joint energy crisis conference of all the provinces, saying that the conference would prove a milestone towards resolving the prolonged energy crisis in the country. The information minister said that the PPP had always honoured the mandate of other political parties by shunning the politics of revenge and confrontation in the country and was striving to strengthen the real democracy and democratic system by taking all the political parties into confidence.
Earlier, addressing the participants of annual parents day ceremony at a local school in Sialkot, Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan disclosed that the federal government would cut the defence budget of the country during the upcoming budget for the fiscal year 2012-2013. She said that the government would cut the defence budget and would spend it on the promotion of education to raise literacy rate.
On the occasion, she stressed upon the need for formulating a uniform educational police to provide equal opportunities of getting education to the poor children as well.