LAHORE, Aug 10: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal had agreed to accept President Pervez Musharraf staying concurrently as the army chief till October 2005 before the religious parties’ alliance dragged its feet on the understanding, PML-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Husain claimed on Sunday.

Speaking to Dawn, he said the two sides had also agreed that the matter would be taken up with President Musharraf so that they could personally listen to his point of view on the subject.

But, he regretted, the MMA turned a sudden somersault on all issues agreed upon, creating a threat for the entire system and providing the electorate an opportunity to ridicule the parliamentarians for their failure to settle contentious issues through talks.

The PML-Q president said the talks with the MMA had come to an end for the time being but would resume the day the alliance agreed to go by the understanding already arrived at.

Mr Shujaat said the nation would revile the MMA if, going by its earlier threats, it disrupted the assembly proceedings. He said in such a situation people would be justified in inferring that the religious parties were not serious in allowing the nascent system to work.

He answered in the negative when asked if either side had a copy of the agreement he was referring to. “Everybody had taken his own notes which are available with both sides”.

The ruling party’s parliamentary leader denied that the government had agreed to limiting Gen Musharraf’s tenure as army chief to October next year.

He said the government had proposed that the LFO should be amended without any side insisting on whether it was part of the Constitution or not. According to him the MMA had accepted the proposal as a basis for further talks.

The two sides, he said, had also agreed to retaining the women’s seats in assemblies till the present assemblies existed. However, it had left to the new legislature to take a different decision about these seats.

The understanding about the president’s powers to sack the assemblies and the status of the National Security Council is now too well known, he said.

The PML-Q chief said it was decided that the issue of declaring Friday as weekly holiday instead of Sunday would be left to parliament.

Asked to comment on reports that the ruling party had agreed that President Musharraf would take a confidence vote from the joint session of parliament which would be regarded as his election, Mr Shujaat said it was not the complete truth.

In fact, he said, the modalities were still to be decided by legal experts and confidence vote was one of them.

Answering a question, Mr Shujaat said there was no possibility of talks between the government and the ARD parties which he alleged were the trouble creators.

In a related development, the MMA and the ARD have re-established contacts to mount pressure to bring the government to terms.