ISLAMABAD, March 31: A three-member delegation of the People’s Party Parliamentarians (PPP) met Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N) chairman Raja Zafarul Haq on Friday and discussed the agenda for a possible meeting of Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto in London, sources told Dawn.
According to the sources, the PML-N chairman briefed the PPP leaders about key decisions taken at the party’s central working committee (CWC) meeting held in London on March 25 and 26.
The PPP delegation was led by its president Makhdoom Amin Fahim and was attended by the party’s secretary general Raja Pervez Ashraf and former opposition leader in the Senate Mian Raza Rabbani.
The sources said that leaders of the PPP and the PML-N, two major component parties of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD), had also discussed plans to convene a meeting of the alliance in London to be jointly presided over by Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto.
Before the ARD meeting, the sources said, Mr Sharif and Ms Bhutto will hold an important meeting to finalise the plan for the next general elections in the country. They said that PPP leaders had informed Mr Haq that they would fly to London in the next few weeks and meet Mr Sharif on Ms Bhutto’s instructions.
Ms Bhutto and PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif during their recent meeting in Dubai had agreed to convene an ARD meeting in London. The meeting is expected to be held in May.
When contacted, PPP Senator Raza Rabbani said that they had actually gone to Mr Haq’s residence to offer condolences over the death of his sister. However, he said, the leaders of the two parties found sufficient time to “discuss and review the overall political situation in the country”. He said they had also reviewed the ARD’s performance.
