JI Secretary-General Syed Munawwar Hasan told reporters that forcing Gen. Musharraf to quit and electing a new president through a procedure laid down in the Constitution, riddance from the military dictatorship for good and appointment of an independent election commissioner in consultation with the opposition are some of the major objectives for which the conference was being organised. According to him, the declaration to be issued at the end of the conference had already been provided to Makhdoom Amin Fahim, who has cleared it with Benazir Bhutto.

He said a total of 100 people belonging to various walks of life had been invited to the conference. Ruling PML MNA Hamid Nasir Chattha, who is also chairman of the Kashmir Committee, Senator S.M. Zafar, former prime minister Zafarullah Jamali, former presidents Rafiq Tarar and Ghulam Ishaq Khan, former chief justices Sajjad Ali Shah and Saeeduzzaman Siddiqui, former foreign ministers Sahabzada Yakub Khan and Agha Shah, a number of retired generals and leaders of all important opposition parties are among the invitees.

Answering a question, Syed Munawwar Hasan said various political parties had refused to take part in the future elections to be held in the presence of Gen. Musharraf. He said although some opposition leaders had talked of demanding future elections under the supervision of the United Nations, their stand was not very clear.

On the other hand, PML-N Chairman Raja Zafarul Haq said his party would formally propose in the September 4 conference that all participants should demand that the next general elections be held under the supervision of the United Nations. He said the judiciary and the election commission had failed to maintain the sanctity of the ballot and now the world body was the last ray of hope for the people. He said that it was provided in Article 2 of the UN Charter that the world body would get the people their right to vote, and since the present rulers had snatched that right people had the right to approach the UN.t. He said he would face the censor board bravely if they removed the ordinance issue from the film. The director said that it was a low-budget film with a new cast and there would be no songs in it. The running time of the film would be 100 minutes which was a new experiment, he added.

He said the film was set against the backdrop of Firozepura village in southern Punjab and would be completed in the next three months. He said he would send the film in the Cannes Film Festival in January. The film’s producer is Afzal M. Khan and is jointly written by Noor and Khan. He said the film’s main story was that a young school teacher who was raped in front of the whole village as punishment because her brother had a relationship with a feudal lord’s sister.

He said that the National College of Arts (NCA) was teaching film-making in its Film and TV Department but it did not invite people from the film industry to teach students about films. “To me, bookish knowledge is easy to convey but it is difficult to teach film-making in a practical manner,” Noor said.