PAKISTAN ISLAMISTS CALL OFF PROTESTS AFTER MINISTER QUITS
WASHINGTON - U.S. Senator Al Franken, trying to salvage his political career amid accusations of groping or inappropriately touching women, said on Sunday he does not plan to resign but called himself “embarrassed and ashamed.”
Franken, a Democrat and former comedian who has represented Minnesota in the Senate since 2009, said in a round of media interviews - his first since the allegations surfaced on November 16 - that he looked forward to returning to his job.
“I‘m embarrassed and ashamed. I’ve let a lot of people down and I‘m hoping I can make it up to them and gradually regain their trust,” Franken told the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Franken resisted comparisons between his behaviour and that of Roy Moore, the Republican nominee for a U.S. Senate seat from Alabama who has been accused of improper conduct involving teenage girls decades ago.
“I‘m going to take responsibility. I‘m going to be held accountable through the ethics committee,” said Franken, whose behaviour is being investigated by the Senate ethics panel. “And I‘m going to hopefully be a voice in this that is helpful... Again, I respect women. What kills me about this is it gives people a reason to believe I don’t respect women.”
Franken told Minneapolis television station WCCO in another interview that his predicament was “a bitter irony” because he has championed women‘s’ issues and has employed them in both his campaign and Senate offices.
In a separate interview with Minnesota Public Radio, Franken, one of the leading liberal voices in the Senate, said has no plans to quit.
When asked if he had considered resigning, Franken said: “No, no. The ethics committee is looking into this and I will cooperate fully with it.” ISLAMABAD - Pakistani Islamists who clashed with police at the weekend have called off national protests after the resignation of Law Minister Zahid Hamid.
Reports from Islamabad and other cities say protesters are starting to leave.
They have been blocking a main road in the capital for weeks demanding Hamid be sacked for blasphemy. He apologised for what he called an error.
At least six people are believed to have been killed when clashes erupted on Saturday and some 200 were injured.
The civilian government is being criticised for backing down in the crisis, which raises new questions about the military's role in Pakistani politics.
"On the assurance of the Chief of Army Staff, we are calling off the sit-in," protest leader Khadim Hussain Rizvi told several thousand demonstrators from the Tehreek-i-Labaik Ya Rasool Allah Party in Islamabad yesterday.
The law minister was accused by the protesters of blasphemy after a reference to the Prophet Muhammad was left out of a revised version of the electoral oath.
He called it a clerical error. Protests against Hamid had gone on for weeks and spread from Islamabad to other cities like Lahore, Peshawar and Karachi.
During Saturday's clashes, the government also suspended private news channels and blocked certain social media networks.
“The decision to resign was taken in a bid to steer the country out of the prevailing critical situation,”Hamid was quoted as saying by Pakistan’s Tribune newspaper.
According to the Dawn newspaper, the protesters have in turn agreed not to issue a fatwa, or Islamic religious ruling, against the minister.
The government gave way on a range of demands, including freeing arrested protesters and paying for the clean-up operation.