July 29, 2003	Tuesday	Jumadi-ul-Awwal 28, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, July 28: The Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) has accused the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) of violating the commitments it had made in the declarations of two all parties conferences (APCs), one held in Lahore and the other in Islamabad recently.

The deputy information secretary of the ARD, Munir Ahmed Khan, told Dawn on Monday that through these declarations the MMA had made a commitment with the nation that it would not compromise on its stand on the Legal Framework Order (LFO) and the supremacy of parliament.

But, he said, by accepting Gen Musharraf as president, they had compromised on their principled stand.

He said the MMA’s parliamentary party leader in the National Assembly, Qazi Hussain Ahmed, had said at the APC convened by the PML-N on Saturday that the government should clarify its stand on the LFO before inviting the opposition for talks.

Mr Khan said the MMA had not briefed the ARD leadership about the discussions it had with the government team on Sunday. None of the MMA leaders, he said, had contacted Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan or any leader of the component party of the alliance after their talks with the government.

He said the ARD was not ready to accept Gen Musharraf as president of the country and therefore the government intentionally created a situation which forced the ARD to announce its boycott of the talks.

The ARD deputy information secretary however claimed that the people were satisfied with the decision of the ARD to boycott the talks. “Particularly, after knowing the details of the government-MMA talks, the people felt better with the ARD’s decision,” he said. Mr Khan said Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif held talks on Sunday evening during which discussed the current political situation and endorsed the ARD decision.

PPP Senator Farhatullah Khan Babar, when contacted, said the flexibility of the MMA on the LFO and president’s uniform was known to the ARD, but the religious alliance had assured that they would not take any decision without consulting other opposition parties. “They have broken this promise,” he said.

Mr Babar said that accepting a general as president was not democracy. Perhaps it was MMA’s version of democracy, he said and added that now the ARD and the MMA were moving in different directions and there was no possibility that the two would agree on a common point.