March 27, 2002	Wednesday	Muharram 12, 1423

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ISLAMABAD March 26: All those people who were convicted had been barred under law from holding any representative office, said president’s press secretary Maj-Gen Rashid Qureshi, at a joint press briefing held at the Foreign Office here on Tuesday.

In this context, he maintained that former prime minister Nawaz Sharif had been convicted, and that as an alternative to his sentence he opted to go into exile (in Saudi Arabia) under an arrangement arrived at between the two states.

Qureshi recalled a statement of the president on the issue during his last Japanese visit. He said the president had stated that under the law, those who had been convicted or were required to answer charges in the court, were debarred from holding public office and had pointed out that it was for the courts and the Election Commission to decide these cases.

Replying to a spate of questions asking him to clarify whether the president had put the question for a referendum about his perceived desire to continue as head of the state after the October elections, he said no decision on the referendum had been taken in General Pervez Musharraf’s latest rounds of talks with the representatives of political parties and groupings.

However, the issue of referendum as projected by the media, he said, had come up during these political consultations and on-going dialogue with all shades of political opinion.

Gen Qureshi said during these talks, the president asked for their views on the issue of referendum. President Musharraf, who had been holding such consultations with different strata and shades of political figures for about a year-and-a-half on a variety of very crucial national issues, had been receiving feedback, he added.

But the president had taken no decision about when or whether there would be a referendum, he said, and added he did not see any attempt to segregate any particular political party or entity from the process of on-going dialogue and consultations.

BORDER SITUATION: Foreign Office spokesman Aziz Ahmad Khan, affirming that Islamabad did not want war with India and sought concentration of the resources and attention by either country to improve the lot of their people, reiterated Pakistan’s repeated efforts to bring New Delhi on the negotiating table to resolve peacefully all their issues and disputes, including Kashmir.

But he did not see any hope that the Indian side would reduce tension between the two countries, and said there was no change on the borders where the forces of the two states were massed against each other for about three months.

Khan said Islamabad saw no evidence of Indian intention to secure reduction in the tension between the two countries, and Qureshi, who is also the Director-General of the Inter-Services Public Relations, said Pakistan had not pulled back its troops from the border.

The Foreign Office spokesman said it was very unfortunate that Pakistan’s repeated genuine offers, which had received appreciation and endorsement from the world community, had failed to evoke a favourable response from New Delhi which, instead, sought to drum up war hysteria among the Indian people. However, the ball was in the Indian court, added the spokesman.

Joining him, Qureshi said perhaps there was some realization among the Indian masses (about the validity of Pakistani offers) but there was some confusion in the Indian rulers’ minds, who continued to make “self-contradictory statements.” However, he hoped, better sense would prevail and concrete efforts would be taken by India to reduce tension.