LAHORE, Nov 3: The Millat Party’s initiative to hold a conference to find a political solution to the Afghanistan problem and bring an end to the incessant US bombing of the war-battered country with the participation of parties representing all shades of opinion from Pakistan and Afghanistan seems torpedoed as over two dozen major and minor parties of the country have refused to take part and response from Afghan parties is still unclear.

The conference was scheduled to be held in Islamabad on Nov 6 but has been delayed till Nov 14 “to facilitate the Afghan leaders from various war zones to reach Pakistan”, as a central Millat Party leader told Dawn on Saturday.

Some parties are not willing to take part in the conference because of their strained relations with Mr Farooq Leghari while others think that the Millat Party chief is working for the government.

ARD President Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, the PPP, the PML(N) the Jamaat-i-Islami, the JUI(F), the JUI(S), the JUP and the Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan are among the parties which will not attend the conference.

The parties which so far have confirmed their participation are: the PML(QA), the Awami National Party and the PML(C).

Sources close to the Nawabzada say that it was unfair on the part of Mr Leghari to work against the Taliban because it was during the PPP’s second tenure, when Mr Leghari was president and independently handling Afghanistan and Kashmir affairs with the consent of the government, that the Taliban were patronized.

Since the Taliban have done nothing against Pakistan, there is no justification for the present government, or Mr Farooq Leghari, to work against the Taliban, sources close to the senior leader say.

The Nawabzada, it is said, thinks that the Northern Alliance is a coalition of anti-Pakistan elements and inviting them to the moot means working against the national interests.

PPP acting secretary-general Raza Rabbai, in a clear attempt to undermine the MP initiative, said that his party did not know any conference was being organized.

It may be pointed out that PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto does not tolerate Mr Leghari for the alleged “betrayal” which he had shown by dismissing the PPP government in November 1996. Her hatred against Mr Leghari is so much that she is sitting with her archrival PML(N) in the ARD but is not willing to shun differences with the Millat Party at any cost.

PML(N) Chairman Raja Zafarul Haq told Dawn that his party would not participate in the conference as it would not serve any useful purpose.

Although the party would not admit, the tug-of-war between Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mr Farooq Leghari as prime minister and president of Pakistan, respectively, has created an unbridgeable gulf between the two parties.

Jamaat-i-Islami Secretary-General Syed Munawwar Hasan told Dawn that not a single party in the Pak-Afghan Defence Council (PADC) will attend the conference.

All 26 parties in the PADC are supporting the Taliban and they don’t agree with the policy being pursued by the military government.

Meanwhile, MIllat party Information Secretary Brig (retd) Muhammad Yousaf told Dawn on Saturday that all political parties of Pakistan and all important Afghan parties, including the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, had been invited to the conference. While Taliban Ambassador Mullah Abdul Salam Zaeef will represent the Taliban, invitations had also been extended to Hizbe Islami Amir Gulbadin Hekmatyar, Nabi Muhammadi, Abdur Rab Rasool Siaf, former president Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gen Dostam.

He claimed that the party had received an ‘encouraging response’ both from the local and Afghan parties and leaders unable to turn up would certainly send their representatives.

The MP leader said that participants of the conference would seek an end to the ongoing attacks on Afghanistan as they would escalate, and not eradicate, terrorism.

The participants, he said, would try to find a political solution of the Afghanistan problem. He said convening of a Loya Jirga, as already proposed by the Millat Party, might be agreed upon by all participants.

Asked what could be the possible solution of the Osama bin Laden issue which was the root cause of the entire crisis, Brig Yousaf said the UN should constitute a tribunal to try him. He said the Saudi dissident could be tried in absentia if he was not willing to appear before the tribunal or was not traceable. Proof of his involvement in the terrorist activities, he believed, would change the opinion about him and the Islamic world would have no objection for action against him.

For the time being, the MP leader said, nobody believed that Osama was the man behind the Sept 11 attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.