28 April 2005	Thursday	18 Rabi-ul-Awwal 1426

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ISLAMABAD, April 27: Pakistan People’s Party leader Asif Ali Zardari said his party would never accept a political role for the armed forces and there was no room for a ‘tailored democracy’ in the country. “Please go back to the barracks before the people of Pakistan push you back,” he said in a remark about the military at a news conference in his house here on Wednesday.

Mr Zardari said the PPP did not want to see a confrontation between the people and the armed forces.

“The people of Pakistan demand and deserve democracy,” he said, adding that the masses were ready to come out onto the streets against the policies of the regime.

Asked to identify the forces that had cracked down on the PPP workers in Lahore on April 16, he said: “Everyone knows about the force that had the power to stop trains and aeroplanes.”

Mr Zardari, whose arrival in Islamabad on Tuesday evening had been preceded by detention of several PPP activists in Rawalpindi, credited his party with what he called exposing the rulers who, he said, neither wanted enlightened moderation nor democracy.

Asked if he would accept an offer to hold talks directly with President Musharraf, he said only the PPP leadership could decide what he should do in such a matter.

Mr Zardari said the country had been passing through a phase where people’s life and property were not safe.

He accused the government of having failed on ‘all fronts’ and said it would also fail to stop a decisive struggle by the ARD. He invited all political parties to join this struggle.

In response to another question, Mr Zardari said the PPP had never worked with the establishment nor did it ever consider the army a political reality.

The PPP leader said the ‘establishment people’ were in a mess and the PPP wanted to open for them a door out of this situation.

Mr Zardari, however, said there had been no direct contact between the PPP and the government, though different people had occasionally approached the party indirectly.

He said the PPP had always stood for across-the-board dialogue and never aspired to come to power through the backdoor.

The PPP leader alleged that 700 to 800 PPP workers had been imprisoned as part of a plan to rig the local polls.

Mr Zardari also criticized government’s economic policies and said prices of every item had increased by over 200 per cent in the past five years.

He said several people in the government had claimed he would not return home from Dubai. “Where those people are who had even promised to resign their offices if I came back?” he asked.

The PPP leader said the party had had a chance in the past to form a government with the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, but it was the collective wisdom of the party leaders that it should not join government with the religious alliance.

About his next programme, Mr Zardari said he wanted to go to the shrine of Bulley Shah to pay tribute to the sufi poet.

“We want to make Punjab a province of Bulley Shah and not of Ranjeet Singh,” the PPP leader said.

Mr Zardari also condemned police action on journalists in Lahore on April 16.

Prominent PPP leaders who were present in the press conference were Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Raja Pervez Ashraf, Sherry Rehman, Jahangir Badr, Farhatullah Babar, Farzana Raja, Chaudhry Manzoor Ahmed, Naveed Chaudhry, Mir Baz Khan Khetran, Malik Hakmin Khan and Ihsanul Haq Paracha.