10 July 2004	Saturday	21 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

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ISLAMABAD, July 9: Two major component parties of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy are still undecided over the fielding of joint candidates in the National Assembly by-elections against Finance Minister Shaukat Aziz, sources say.

An important meeting of the alliance would be held here on Saturday (today) to resolve the differences between the People's Party Parliamentarians and the Pakistan Muslim League-N over the fielding of joint candidates for the by-polls in Attock and Tharparkar against Mr Aziz.

The sources said after the local leadership's failure to resolve differences in this regard, exiled leaders of both the parties, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, intervened in the situation. The sources said both Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif had directed their respective parties to forego differences in the larger interest of the alliance, whose very existence was in jeopardy.

It was learnt that differences between the two parties existed only on the Attock seat where both the parties wanted to field their own candidates from the ARD platform. After the ARD's failure to nominate joint candidates in a two-day meeting in Lahore, the PPP and the PML-N had asked potential candidates to file their nomination papers and await a final decision in this regard.

Following the decision, four PPP candidates and two PML-N candidates had submitted their nomination papers for the Attock seat (NA-59). Those who submitted nominations on the PPP ticket are Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Dr Sikandar Hayat, Ghulam Abbas and Naveed Chaudhry while Malik Sohail and Sheikh Suleman Sarwar submitted their papers on behalf of the PML-N.

The sources said that there were chances that the ARD meeting might continue for another day if both the parties failed to arrive at a consensus on Saturday. Meanwhile, a meeting of the PML-N was held at the residence of Begum Kulsoom Nawaz here on Friday evening to review the political situation and the party's position in Attock and Tharparkar.

The meeting was presided over by PML-N's chairman Raja Zafarul Haq and was attended, among others, by Tehmina Daultana and Jaffar Iqbal. A source in the PML-N said that the party had finalized the name of Malik Sohail for the Attock by-polls. He said that the PML-N would seek PPP's support for Malik Sohail in the Saturday's meeting.

On the other hand, sources in the PPP told Dawn that the party was considering the names of Dr Sikandar Hayat and Ghulam Abbas as its candidates for the Attock by-polls.

The sources said Raja Pervaiz Ashraf was not willing to contest the election. Similarly, the sources said, there were no chances that Naveed Chaudhry would be nominated as the PPP candidate as he was not considered a strong candidate.

They said now the PPP had a choice between Dr Sikandar Hayat, who also contested the October 2002 election on PPP ticket, and former MPA Chaudhry Ghulam Abbas. However, the sources said, both Dr Sikandar and Ghulam Abbas had told the PPP leadership that they were unable to spend money on their election campaigns and had asked the party to provide funds in this regard.

Interestingly, the top leadership of the PPP and the PML-N, when contacted for official comments, expressed the hope that the ARD would announce a joint candidate in the Saturday's meeting.

"We hope that the differences between the PPP and the PML-N will be resolved," said PPP Senator Raza Rabbani, adding: "We don't want to create problems for ARD's component parties." Similarly, PML-N's information secretary Siddiqul Farooque said that the ARD would succeed in announcing a joint candidate for the Attock by-polls.

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