Sharif govt faces charges of helping few to cart away dollars

But Finance Minister Sartaj Aziz has ridiculed this allegation saying the banks did not have so many dollars. However. Later he admitted in a joint session of Parliament that $ 200 million had been withdrawn after the blasts. He said the banks which allowed these withdrawals would be punished.

Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leader Choudhry Aitzaz Ahsan, who was deputising for Benazir Bhutto as the Leader of the Opposition alleged that some of the relatives of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif had been tipped off about thefreeze and they transferred about $ 500 million just before the freeze was announced on the day of nuclear tests. However, Aziz said there was no such leak.

In the meantime, The Dawn of Karachi in an article says that it is difficult for the government to successfully stop the capital flight. "The hundi operators are already back in business and the hawala business is soon going to be booming," it writes.

Pakistan is banking on the patriotism of non-resident Pakistanis to face post-nuclear tests sanctions. But a Pakistani economic expert told the British Broadcasting Corporation two days ago that the experiment of depending on funds from non-resident Pakistanis failed last year and now there is fear that if the government can freeze foreign currently accounts, it can seize them, too.

Meanwhile, assailants gunned down eight people, including three members of the same family, in a night of violence in the southern port city of Karachi, police said today.

Shortly after midnight alone gunman broke into a house in the ethnically troubled eastern district of Karachi killing a father and his two sons. A third son escaped, found his gun and killed the attacker.

So far no one has taken responsibility for the killings, but police fear they were linked to the longstanding feud between rival factions of the Mohajir Qami Movement.

In the last two months nearly 100 people have been killed in Karachi and police say they are all linked to the increasingly bitter and violent feud.The movement, which represents Indian Muslims who settled in Pakistan after the British departed the subcontinent in 1947, split apart several years ago and have been battling each other ever since.

Also overnight, gunmen killed Khalid Mahmood, the brother of a Mohajir dissident. Mahmood was sitting outside his pharmacy in the heart of Karachi when gunmen rode by and shot him, police said.

A drive-by shooting outside a restaurant, also in the central district of Karachi, left three people dead and at least nineothers wounded.

No one has been arrested in connection with any of the killings, although police routinely round up known militants of both factions.

In Karachi two members of a government-run anti-corruption committee were shot and killed along yesterday with a member of the right-wing religious party, Jamaat-E-Islami.