The National Security Council (NSC) has largely become history even before all its new members have been elected. The one event, which has written its obituary, was the last week's briefing by Chief of the Army Staff General Pervaiz Ashfaq Kayani to the top political leadership on the anti-terror operations. “The circus of the NSC stands closed after the body was not considered a proper forum for the briefing to the senior political leadership on the operations in the tribal areas,” a Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) federal minister told this correspondent. However, NSC Secretary Tariq Aziz said the body continued to exist and added that it never discussed the anti-terrorism operation since it was created. He said the planning and execution of plans against terrorists and extremists in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas and elsewhere in Pakistan were never taken up by the NSC. The federal minister said his top party leadership and colleagues in the cabinet would never attend any meeting of the NSC as long as President Pervez Musharraf would head it. However, he said they would have acted otherwise had the prime minister chaired the body. But, he said, there was no need or relevance of the NSC in the democratic system, as the defense committee of the cabinet presided over by the premier was the most appropriate forum to take up different national issues. This, he said, also ensures and demonstrates the due supremacy of parliament. The present NSC, whose actual shape was originally proposed by Musharraf, was significantly changed to make it an insignificant debating club and was created courtesy of the 17th Amendment passed by the previous National Assembly. It can be scrapped by a simple law. The present NSC is just an advisory body, whose recommendations are non-binding on the government and all others concerned. It comprises the prime minister, the chiefs of the armed forces and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Committee, the four provincial governors, the leader of the opposition in the National Assembly and some federal ministers. The minister said Musharraf must have realized the inconsequentiality of his NSC and even his own weight and worth in the present dispensation after Wednesday's briefing. __
