ISLAMABAD, July 30: Some fresh overtures have been made to forge a grand opposition alliance between two major opposition blocs — the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) and the Alliance for Restoration of Democracy (ARD). The vice president of PML-Nawaz, Syed Zafar Ali Shah, held a 45-minute meeting on Saturday with the acting secretary general of MMA, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, and stressed the need for expanding political talks on forging a possible “grand alliance” of the opposition.
Mr Shah told the MMA leader that the party had already received directives from its leader to go ahead with the plan. Mr Shah said that the party’s secretary general, Zafar Iqbal Jhagra, had also been summoned to Jeddah for further instructions.
Earlier, the MMA in its meeting in Islamabad last Wednesday had decided to take along all other opposition parties into confidence before going for a ‘decisive’ movement against General Pervez Musharraf. Talking to Dawn, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said that he had told the PML-N leader during talks that it was the PPP Parliamentarians that had caused a setback to the earlier understanding between the two groupings.
He recalled his meeting with PPP Parliamentarians chairperson Benazir Bhutto in Dubai in which PML-N chairman Raja Zafarul Haq also took part. In the said meeting both sides had agreed to take steps to forge an alliance on a minimum-point agenda. He said that he also recounted the earlier high-level meetings between top leaders of the two alliances in which both had agreed to forge a united opposition front on a three-point agenda.
Further elaborating, he said that both alliances had decided to launch a campaign against the government and remove Gen Musharraf as president and chief of army staff, to restore the 1973 constitution as it stood on October 12, 1999 and appoint of an independent poll commission for holding free, fair and transparent elections.
PML-N will convene an important meeting in Islamabad on Sunday to discuss its talks with the MMA so far and chart its future course on its relations with the alliance if the talks on a grand opposition alliance collapse.
The PPP sources have also revealed that the party leadership has discussed the possibility of forging an alliance with the religious alliance without compromising its stand on some foreign policy perceptions and some national issues.
Ms Bhutto is believed to have directed her party’s leadership to take necessary initiatives to create a formidable opposition alliance that could challenge Gen Musharraf’s rule.
The sources also revealed that although the government’s covert negotiations with the PPP were still continuing, there was little or no possibility of the two working out a final settlement.
