September 26, 2003	Friday	Rajab 28, 1424

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ISLAMABAD, Sept 25: Differences on ways to unify five factions of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML) persisted among factional leaders as an advisory committee on the implementation of unification decision met here on Thursday.

The committee has proposed recourse to the Election Commission in the first instance to register the unified party without an affix to specify a faction, a spokesman said.

The process will involve requests by each faction to the Election Commission for removal of their respective affixes that they had adopted for getting election symbols.

The advisory body meeting held here at the PML House and presided over by Dr Ranjha was also attended by MNA Zahid Hamid of the PML-Q, Malik Haider Usman of the PML-F, Intikhab Khan of the PML-Z, Iqbal Dar of the PML-J, Sheikh Anwar Saeed and Azeem Chaudhry.

Later, Mr Ranjha told reporters that after discussing constitutional and legal matters, the committee decided to advise recourse to the Election Commission with the request to remove affixes attached to all the factions and register the party as Pakistan Muslim League.

He said the meeting discussed legal implications of the merger through dissolution of the respective party organisations under Article 63(a) and Article 17 of the Constitution, the Political Parties Order 2002 and constitutions of all factions.

The decision would also have implications for the members of assemblies and Senate from each faction when they would merge with each other, he said.

The committee members were however divided over the question whether the organizations of the five factions were dissolved or were still intact.

Some participants said that only Chaudhry Shujaat remained president of the new party while others insisted that the party organizations of each faction would continue to function until the new party was registered by the Election Commission.

Dr Ranjha said the committee had concluded that since all the factions had adopted affixes for the purpose of election symbols and were registered as PML, there would be no hurdle in the registration of the merged party as PML.

He said a report had been prepared to be submitted to Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain on Friday.