ISLAMABAD, Aug 5: Loyalists of President Pervez Musharraf leading the opposition in the Senate picked up ISI as their main cause on Tuesday as they stepped up attacks on the PPP-led coalition government on the second day of a debate on national security.

Starting with a protest walkout led by a former head of the country’s premier spy agency under fire at home and abroad for alleged links with militants, a group of Senators of the formerly ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q) sought a formal withdrawal of last month’s government notification that placed the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) under the administrative, financial and operational control of the interior division.

The group’s aggressive stance — one of them naming Pakistan People’s Party co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari as head of a “triangle” allegedly seeking to undermine the ISI and another calling for the withdrawal of the notification by midnight — came as the PPP leader was having talks with Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) leader Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad about the future of their troubled coalition and a possible parliamentary impeachment of the discredited president.

The opposition was not satisfied with the government’s apparent retraction made in a statement hours after the July 27 notification that said the ISI would continue under the prime minister’s control and promised a detailed clarification afterwards, which is yet to come.

The opposition assault following a poor showing on the first day of the debate on Monday began with a token walkout after former ISI director-general and retired lieutenant-general Javed Ashraf protested at a private television report that quoted leader of the house Raza Rabbani of the PPP as saying the government would not withdraw the original notification and that the ISI would remain under the interior ministry’s control.

Mr Ashraf accused Mr Rabbani, who was not in the house being one of Mr Zardari’s team in talks with the PML-N, of going back on his statement in the house on Monday that the ISI would remain under the prime ministerial control and that a detailed clarification was being “worked out” by the prime minister’s secretariat.Mr Rabbani later denied making the statement attributed to him in the television report aired hours before the fireworks in the Senate, where the harshest attacks on the government came from two PML-Q women senators.

Bibi Yasmin Shah, who was seen reading from pages of prepared notes, described the July 27 notification as the “brainchild” of Pakistan’s ambassador to the United States Hussain Haqqani, executed by Interior Adviser Rehman Malik with the final approval coming from Mr Zardari and also alleged its links with the plans of India’s Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) spy agency.

“It was RAW’s plan to destabilise the ISI … and Pakistan’s defences,” she said.

With PPP ministers and most party senators absent from the house at the time mainly because of the Zardari-Nawaz talks, there was little protest from the party and house Chairman Mohammedmian Soomro even dismissed a demand from Housing and Works Minister Rehmatullah Kakar of the Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam that he expunge remarks against Mr Zardari as the PPP leader could not respond in the house for not being its member.

Senator Gulshan Saeed was almost hysterical as she accused the government of trying to “destroy” the ISI, which she said “we will not allow to happen”.

She ridiculed Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani’s performance during his recent US visit as well, as Mr Zardari and Mr Sharif who, she said, had “been meeting at different places as a hero and a heroine”.

Even senior PML-Q figure S.M. Zafar did not spare the prime minister, comparing his US visit with a puppet show and advised the government to seek reinstatement of deposed judges through a constitutional amendment though he asked Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister Farooq Naek to withdraw his controversial constitutional amendment package.

However, former Senate chairman Wasim Sajjad, who leads the PML-Q parliamentary group in the Senate, was less severe as he called for keeping the ISI under the prime minister’s control although he suggested the creation of an intelligence committee of the cabinet to coordinate information from different intelligence agencies as well as an intelligence committee of the Senate.

Earlier opening the day’s debate, ANP’s Haji Adeel said the ISI should be answerable to parliament and called for the creation of a parliamentary committee to probe the agency’s conduct, including its role in Afghanistan.

Abdul Rahim Mandokhel of the Pakhtunkhwa Milli Awami Party and Khalid Mahmood Soomro of the JUI also criticised its alleged role in encouraging militant groups in the country.

The debate will continue on Wednesday, when the house will meet 10.30am.