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| November 9, 2005 | Wednesday | Shawwal 6, 1426 |
Political rivals sit together at Saudi dinner table
ISLAMABAD, Nov 8: Some of the country’s bitter political rivals sat together at a Saudi dinner table with a brother of King Abdullah and earned the kingdom’s praise for putting aside mutual differences to face the earthquake disaster.
The dinner hosted by the Saudi ambassador on Monday night was marked by assurances from Prince Ahmad bin Abdul Aziz, the king’s younger brother and vice-minister of interior, of the kingdom’s support to Pakistan for relief and reconstruction.
Among the guests were ruling Pakistan Muslim League’s president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal chief Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the opposition in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rehman, Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz’s chairman Raja Zafarul Haq and several federal ministers.
But there appeared to be no representation from the Pakistan People’s Party.
The federal ministers present were Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri (foreign affairs), Shiekh Rashid Ahmed (information and broadcasting), Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao (interior), Ejazul Haq (religious affairs), Nasir Khan (health).
Dr Salman Shah (Prime Minister’s adviser on finance) and leader of the house in Senate Wasim Sajjad were also present.
“The government and opposition are on one table...and this reflects their love for Saudi Arabia,” ambassador Ali Saeed Awadh Asseri said in a welcoming speech.
He praised the Pakistani politicians for what he called forgetting their differences to demonstrate their concern for the earthquake-stricken people in line with Islamic teachings.
But Prince Ahmad, who had earlier met President Pervez Musharraf and visited some of the quaker-hit areas of Azad Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province, restricted his Arabic language speech to conveying the Saudi leadership’s assurances for long-term and “effective help” to Pakistan in facing the challenge posed the destruction caused by October 8 killer earthquake.
Although the opposition parties have declined to sit with the ruling coalition at a proposed all-parties conference to discuss ways to tackle the post-earthquake situation, their leaders were engaged in apparently restrained conversation as they waited for more than 1-1/2 hours for Prince Ahmad’s arrival.
Later most of them sat at the same table for dinner with the Saudi prince, who came here with a big delegation as mark of solidarity in the wake of Pakistan’s worst earthquake, which has killed more than 80,000 people.
Though the Saudi Arabian ambassador claimed credit for bringing top government and opposition politicians together at his dinner table, there was no indication whether the kingdom was playing a role for a political reconciliation in Pakistan.
Monday’s get-together followed the Pakistani government’s permission to former prime minister Nawaz Sharif to take a break from his five-year-old exile in Saudi Arabia to take an ailing son for treatment in Britain.
The other major opposition leader, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, is living in self-exile in Dubai since 1999.
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