Chances of early resumption of talks bleak: Opposition says govt trying to buy time
By Ahmed Hassan and Rafaqat Ali
ISLAMABAD, Aug 17: Prospects of an early resumption of government-MMA talks to break the deadlock on the proposed constitutional package appeared bleak on Sunday as all the top MMA leaders left the federal capital for other engagements.
The religious parties alliance, which had decided at its recent meeting not to shut its doors on dialogue, felt that the government was only trying to gain time by engaging it in an unending process of negotiations, while taking no practical step for presenting the constitutional package in parliament for its approval, sources told Dawn.
MMA President Allama Shah Ahmed Noorani left for a week-long tour of Ireland on August 15, while alliance’s Vice-President Qazi Hussain Ahmed has embarked on a mass contact campaign in the Swat valley. MMA Secretary-General Maulana Fazlur Rahman has also left for D.I.Khan.
Similarly, other main leaders Hafiz Hussain Ahmed and Liaquat Baloch are away from the capital.
Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali and PML-Q chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain have had several rounds of mutual consultations, besides having discussions with President Gen Pervez Musharraf and his team during the last week but there was no indication from any quarter about resumption of talks.
Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali is scheduled to leave for Saudi Arabia on August 19 to perform Umra. According to official sources, he is expected to return on August 23.
Talking to Dawn from Lahore by telephone, MMA’s Deputy Secretary-General Liaquat Baloch said the main hurdle in taking the dialogue process to a logical conclusion was the ego of President Gen Pervez Musharraf.
He said the ruling party’s leadership was divided over the LFO issue and the president’s uniform, while President Musharraf’s advisers were misguiding him.
Liaquat Baloch and Hafiz Hussain Ahmed are also expected to start talks with the ARD leaders on Monday on the possibility of filing a joint requisition for National Assembly session.
He said the MMA supreme council which met on August 9 had decided to contact the ARD parliamentary group for the filing of a joint requisition for the convening of the National Assembly session.
He said both the MMA and the ARD had similar stand on the Legal Framework Order. He claimed the MMA leadership never deviated from its stated position on the issue in its talks with the government.
Sources said possibility of any breakthrough in the government-MMA talks on the LFO was remote, at least till the return of President Pervez Musharraf from New York, where he is due to address the UN General Assembly on Sept 24.
They said the talks would linger on at least for a month or so, and would not take any shape till the return of President Pervez Musharraf from the United States.
Explaining the reason why they believe the government would not enter into any agreement with the MMA before the president’s return, the sources said the president presumably wanted to avoid being seen in New York as a man who had succumbed to the demands of fundamentalists and depended on them for his political survival.
Official sources told Dawn that the government had identified Qazi Hussain Ahmad as the only stumbling block in the talks with the MMA as he had been making new demands in every meeting.
The sources said Qazi Hussain Ahmad, who has nothing to lose in case of failure of talks except the MMA unity, was seeking maximum advantage for his own party, the Jamaat-i-Islami. The JI has no significant share in the NWFP government and its presence in the Balochistan government is nil.
The sources believed that Qazi Hussain Ahmad’s plans of “confrontational politics” in Punjab to expand the JI base, would be affected in case the MMA entered into an agreement with the government on the LFO.
They said in the last government-MMA meeting a consensus had been evolved on almost every issue, yet no agreement could be reached as Qazi Hussain Ahmad insisted that President Pervez Musharraf should give it in writing when he would shed his uniform.
In case the president could not put it in writing, the president should make a public statement giving a timeframe in this regard, the JI chief demanded.
