11 July 2004	Sunday	22 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

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ISLAMABAD, July 10: The Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy on Saturday once again failed to announce joint candidates for the by-elections in Attock and Tharparkar against ruling PML's Shaukat Aziz as both the PPP and the PML-N refused to withdraw their candidates in favour of the other.

Sources said that despite repeated direct interventions of PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto from London and PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif from Jeddah during the six-hour long ARD meeting, the local leadership of the two parties failed to resolve their differences.

The sources said that at one stage, members of the other component parties of the alliance even staged a walkout to protest the 'stubborn' attitude of the two major parties during the meeting.

PML-N chairman Raja Zafarul Haq and PPP president Makhdoom Amin Fahim also held a one-to-one meeting which lasted for 45 minutes. However, it also remained inconclusive.

The differences between the PPP and the PML-N centred round the Attock seat where both the parties wanted to field their own candidates from the ARD platform. After failure of the alliance to nominate joint candidates in a two-day meeting in Lahore about a week ago, the PPP and the PML-N had asked their potential candidates to file their nomination papers pending a final decision. Following that decision, four candidates of the PPP and two of the PML-N submitted their papers for the Attock seat (NA-59).

Those who have submitted nominations on the PPP ticket are Raja Pervaiz Ashraf, Dr Sikandar Hayat, Ghulam Abbas and Naveed Chaudhry. On behalf of the PML-N, Malik Sohail and Sheikh Suleman Sarwar have filed their papers.

After the Lahore meeting, the ARD leaders had announced that a joint candidate would be announced after a meeting of the alliance in Islamabad on July 10. This time round, hectic efforts were made by the PPP and the PML-N top leadership to bridge the gap between the two arch rivals of the past, but all the efforts went in vain.

Briefing reporters after the meeting here on Saturday, ARD chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim claimed that the alliance had reached a consensus on a joint candidate. However, Mr Fahim refused to disclose the name of the candidate or the party to which he belonged, saying it would be announced in a day or two after taking those parties into confidence which had been supporting the alliance in the National Assembly.

Mr Fahim said that they had failed to contact Imran Khan of Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf, Mehmood Khan Achakzai of the Pakhtoonkhwa Milli Awami Party and Abdur Rauf Mengal of Balochistan National Party despite several attempts.

He said the ARD was morally bound to inform these three leaders about the decision. He said the name of the candidate would be announced before July 18, the last date for the withdrawal of candidature.

One of the participants of the meeting said on condition of anonymity that after the failure of the local leadership to reach an agreement the matter had now been left to be decided by Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif.

He said both Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto wanted to keep the ARD intact. However, he regretted, no one was ready to sacrifice his party's interest for the cause of democracy and future of the alliance.

He said the statement of Mr Fahim that the candidate's name would be announced later after taking other parties into confidence was an excuse to buy time.