ISLAMABAD, May 27: President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali on Tuesday held an important meeting in the Army House, and discussed the issue of the president’s sweeping powers under the LFO which the opposition parties are not ready to accept.

The unscheduled meeting lasted one hour and a half. It was the first meeting between the president and the prime minister after the government-opposition talks on the LFO for 17 days.

The opposition parties are demanding that President Gen Pervez Musharraf leave the office of COAS as it is contrary to the very idea of democracy. No democracy in the world is presided over by a serving army general, they argue.

The president, however, is not ready to budge from his stated position that he would continue wearing uniform. He has been saying that the decision of laying down his uniform should be left to him. The president has also spurned the demand for giving a specific date on which he would quit the COAS office.

It is learnt that the meeting was one-on-one, and even the TV crew permanently stationed in the Army House, was not given the photo opportunity.

No official word was available on the meeting, except that the two discussed regional and international issues concerning Pakistan.

All the opposition parties are in Islamabad, firming up their stance on the LFO, and chalking out a strategy on how to bring the government to its knees in the budget session early next month.