MMA willing to attend but ARD to boycott: Party heads’ meeting on LFO today
By Ahmed Hassan and Amir Wasim
ISLAMABAD, July 26: The Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD) announced late on Saturday that it will boycott the party heads’ meeting convened by Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali while the MMA remained undecided, saying it will review its decision on Sunday.
The MMA said it had decided in principle to attend the meeting since it was its considered view that the talks were the only way to break the constitutional deadlock.
ARD chief Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan announced the boycott decision after consulting all the major opposition leaders who participated in the all-parties conference (APC) convened by the PML-N earlier in the day.
The MMA’s executive committee, which went into session late in the evening with its president Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani in the chair, decided that since Prime Minister Jamali had vowed on the floor of the house to resume talks from where they were broken, the alliance will attend the meeting.
The conglomerate of religious parties was of the view that all the opposition parties had accepted Mr Jamali’s invitation for talks and his request that the no-trust motion against the National Assembly’s deputy speaker be withdrawn.
MMA’s Liaquat Baloch told reporters afterwards that the Majlis was unaware of the ARD’s decision of talks boycott, and it will continue contacts with the opposition parties till Sunday morning to reach a conclusion.
However, he said, the MMA was in touch with the ARD leadership to persuade them to review their decision.
He said the MMA was briefed by Maulana Fazlur Rahman on his India visit. The MMA, he said, appreciated the effort of the Maulana aimed at improving relations between India and Pakistan.
He said the alliance will go by the decisions taken at the APCs held in Lahore and Islamabad, and participate in the August 14 public rally at Liaqat Bagh in a big way.
The MMA regretted the statements issued by PML-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain ruling out talks on the LFO and supporting president-in-uniform, and termed them unnecessary.
Mr Baloch said the MMA will only hold talks on the question of LFO and its contentious parts as, in its opinion, nothing could become part of the Constitution unless it was approved by a two-thirds majority of parliament.
ARD’s deputy secretary-information Munir Ahmed Khan told Dawn that the Nawabzada had taken notice of Mr Jamali’s statement that he was holding talks with politicians and not the ARD. He said it seemed that the prime minister was ignoring a reality.
Meanwhile, sources told Dawn that the Prime Minister talked to the PPP president Makhdoom Amin Fahim by telephone in what appeared to be a last-ditch effort to persuade the opposition parties to participate in the dialogue. Soon after receiving the call, the sources said, the PPP president held discussion with Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan and Makhdoom Javed Hashmi. The consultation continued for about an hour following which the Nawabzada announced the boycott decision.
Qazi Hussain Ahmed told reporters that the decision that the opposition would not go for talks with the prime minister unless the government assured that the LFO was on the agenda had been taken by the ARD, and not by the MMA. However, he said, the MMA also wanted the government to announce that the LFO was part of the agenda.
Though a joint declaration was issued after the APC, there was no mention in the declaration of the talks with the government which were only 24 hours away.
