July 20, 2003	Sunday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 19, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, July 19: Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali has decided to convene the government-opposition parliamentary party heads’ meeting on Saturday to discuss contentious issues of Legal Framework Order (LFO).

Sources told Dawn on Saturday that the premier held consultations with some of his coalition partners and decided to fix July 26 as the date for convening the meeting unless otherwise advised by Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-i-Azam) president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, who is expected to return home on Wednesday.

Mr Jamali also finalized a list of coalition parties’ members for appointment as chairmen of the standing committees of the House and parliamentary secretaries which would be announced after the final nod from Mr Hussain.

The main purpose of the government-opposition meeting, according to a source, was to evolve a mechanism for the future political dialogue as one or two such meetings would not be sufficient for breaking the deadlock.

The sources, however, claimed that the party heads meeting would be a success in setting the ball rolling and may settle some of the issues for future meetings.

First meeting of the parliamentary party heads was convened by the prime minister in the last week of April which decided in two days deliberations to form an 11-member combined constitutional committee. The committee, headed by the National Assembly speaker, had submitted its report on May 23 after 18 days of deliberations.

When asked about the chances of the success of the fresh talks with the government, an opposition leader said: “It all depends on government’s sincerity but if it was only trying to buy time then it would further deepen the political crisis.”

PML-Q leader Kabir Ali Wasti expressed confidence that it would be able to hammer out all contentious issues.

Some of the opposition party heads, including Maulana Fazlur Rehman and Qazi Hussain Ahmed of the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, were expected to return home by Friday.