ISLAMABAD, Dec 18: The government on Thursday hinted in the National Assembly at the possibility of formulating a new national security policy to meet present-day challenges about which it said foreign models were being studied and opposition views would be welcome.

The indication from Prime Minister’s Adviser on Interior Rehman Malik came during a debate on national security after a prominent member of the opposition Pakistan Muslim League-N, Ahsan Iqbal, called for an “integrated national security policy” which, he said, should bridge the traditional gap of thinking between civilian leadership and the military and be overseen by the recently reactivated Defence Committee of the Cabinet.

Mr Iqbal had proposed a study of the Saudi Arabia’s model to tackle terrorism, which he said was not only punitive but also reformative and had been a success.“We are studying the Saudi system and also of (strife-torn) Sri Lanka,” Mr Malik said, promising to incorporate the PML-N member’s proposals in “what we are doing in the process of national security”, which he did not elaborate.

The adviser also promised to sit with the PML-N member to discuss the issue and said the government was doing everything possible for national security for which “we should rise above party politics”.

Mr Iqbal gave an incisive critique of the government’s actions and perceived inactions to face allegations of Pakistani connections of last month’s terror attacks in Mumbai and lamented a perceived failure to counter what he called India’s diplomatic and media “offensive” to blame Pakistan for “their own domestic contradictions and failures” that he said led to terrorism there.

He also accused India of damaging the process of confidence-building in South Asia by going to the UN Security Council over the Nov 26 attacks, bypassing a new democratic Pakistani government while a new focus on Kashmir dispute was expected with the advent of President-elect Barack Obama’s government in the United States.

Mr Iqbal said the PML-N, which is the largest opposition party in the lower house after withdrawing from the Pakistan People’s Party-led coalition government in May, also wanted peaceful relations with India “but we believe in peace with dignity and strength”.

He cited an allegedly defective governance and a dichotomy of powers — “we don’t know whether to look to the prime minister or the presidency” for the exercise of powers — as Pakistan’s handicaps in facing external threats and called for an early annulment of the controversial 17th Amendment of the Constitution to restore traditional prime ministerial powers now being exercised by the presidency.

A PPP back-bencher, Sher Mohammad Baloch, regretted the PML-N’s criticism of the government after what he called abandoning the coalition in a “whirlpool”, to be told by Mr Iqbal that “we had come with an oar to row the boat together but you threw us overboard midstream and started rowing the boat by yourselves”.

Mr Baloch, who was greeted with loud desk-thumping from PPP benches apparently in view of his usual complaint of being ignored in getting a turn to speak in the house, became the only law-maker to voice support in the house for the controversial additional marks given to a daughter of Chief Justice Abdul Hameed Dogar to enable her to get admission in a medical college.

“What heavens have fallen by the additional 20 marks?” he asked, and wondered why human rights activists were not speaking for the girl, whose case has become a cause of an apparent conflict between parliament and judiciary after a Supreme Court judge recently restrained the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Education, which has refused to obey the order, from probing the alleged favour done to her by the Federal Board of Secondary Education.