November 26, 2002	Tuesday	Ramazan 20, 1423

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ISLAMABAD, Nov 25: Dissenters from Pakistan People’s Party on Monday launched a new faction.

“We have formed our own group,” Interior Minister Makhdoom Faisal Saleh Hayat told AFP.

The party will be called PPPP-Patriot, its deputy secretary-general, Zaheer Abbas Khokhar said.

He said the purpose of forming a splinter group was that “it will rid the mainstream (party) from those who, taking advantage of PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto’s absence abroad, had made the party hostage.”

Rao Sikandar Iqbal, who was given the portfolio of defence and the post of senior minister, will lead the group, Mr Khokhar said.

Mr Hayat will be its senior vice-chairman. A spokesman for the PPP, Nazir Dhoki, said the dissenters faced possible expulsion.

“It is now clear Mir Zafarullah Jamali could not have been elected prime minister had they not voted for him,” he said.

“Whatever robe they wear they cannot hide their faces. They are turncoats,” he said.

Mr Khokhar, however, insisted that the party remained loyal to Ms Bhutto and claimed they were following her advice to accept a role in the new government.

“Ms Bhutto had given Mr Hayat the mandate to participate in the government. People had voted us to play a role in the government-making,” he said. “We should not be apologetic. We are trying to save the party.”

He rejected criticism from the mainstream party of the dissenters’ winning of key portfolios, saying that the plum cabinet posts were rewards for ending the month-long stalemate in formation of the government.

“Our group played a key role in breaking the political deadlock. The Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam) was thankful to us because, despite being a leading party, it was unable to form the government,” he said.

Asked which faction would be considered the mainstream party, he said: “The party which has roots among the masses.”