April 18, 2006	Tuesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 19, 1427

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RAWALPINDI, April 17: Pakistan Muslim League Vice-President Syed Kabir Ali Wasti has openly disagreed with the ruling coalition leaders who want President Gen Pervez Musharraf to seek re-election from the existing assemblies while remaining in uniform.

“They are against national integrity and solidarity and no well-wisher of the president,” he said in a statement on Monday.

While these people claimed to have made the PML the country’s strongest party, they were advising the president to stay in uniform and get himself elected through the present assemblies. “Both suggestions are sinister in nature and have disastrous implications for the country and President Pervez Musharraf himself,” he said.

“If the (ruling) PML is strong and popular to win the elections, it need not have the cover of the uniform,” he added.

Mr Wasti said the present PML leadership was trying to cover up its own weaknesses and ineptness by urging the president to keep his military uniform even though neither he nor the PML needed it.

He said some of these leaders had combined with some NAB officials to launch a virulent campaign against Ms Bhutto by projecting various allegations against her. President Musharraf will be the main victim of their campaign, he observed.

Not just that, “these elements are carrying on a malicious campaign against PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto,” he said but did not name them.

In his opinion their campaign was “part of a conspiracy to close all options available to President Musharraf in order to make him solely dependent on them”.

Mr Wasti asserted that “President Musharraf is in a position to directly win the elections” on the strength of his “invaluable services to the nation”.

“For this purpose he would have to hold negotiations with mainstream political parties, stop anti-Benazir campaign and prepare for the elections by doffing his uniform.

The nation wants him to be elected as a civilian president,” he said.

The PML leader proposed that in the larger national interest, the president should constitute a committee led by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz which should establish contacts with popular leaders and political parties of the country and forge a national consensus for facilitating the election of President Musharraf.