OKARA, Dec 8: MMA provincial chief Liaquat Baloch has claimed that Chief Minister Pervaiz Elahi and PML President Chaudhry Shujaat Husain have assured him that there will be no combined marathon on Jan 29, 2006. Talking to Dawn on phone on Thursday, he said the alliance had no objection to separate marathons of men and women. He said the MMA activists had last year protested against the mixed event held in Gujranwala and decided to contact the Punjab government to make sure that there would be no combined race any where in the country.

Answering a question, the MNA said the forward bloc in the NWFP Assembly was not against the MMA but it had some administrative problems with Chief Minister Muhammad Akram Khan Durrani.

He disclosed that at the meeting of the MMA supreme council on Dec 19 in Islamabad, the schedule for provincial organization of the religious-party alliance would be announced for Sindh, Balochistan and the NWFP.