July 05, 2007	Thursday	Jamadi-us-Sani 19, 1428

LAHORE, July 4: Leaders participating in the multi-party conference to be held in London on Saturday and Sunday will try to decide a joint course of action to thwart Gen Musharraf’s bid to get re-elected from the present assemblies, opposition sources said on Wednesday.

They will also discuss what the opposition parties should do if Gen Musharraf insisted on holding the elections under his own supervision.

Gen Musharraf said recently that he was going to stay on no matter whether some political party contested the election or abstained from the process.

A number of opposition leaders have already arrived in London and many others are scheduled to land there during the next couple of days.

The two-day conference would be held at Four Seasons hotel, which was the venue of an ARD meeting a year ago. All parties in the ARD had signed the Charter of Democracy at the meeting.

An eight-point agenda has been decided for the MPC. Restoration of the 1973 Constitution as it stood in October 1999, free and fair elections under the supervision on an interim government of national consensus minus Gen Musharraf, establishment of an independent and autonomous election commission, a free and independent judiciary and permission to the exiled leaders to return to Pakistan and lead their respective parties are important items listed on the agenda.

The situation after the removal of Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, colossal damages caused by floods, situation in Waziristan and power shortages in various cities will also come under discussion.

A total of 170 delegates have been invited to the MPC, which will conclude with the issuance of a joint declaration.

A draft of the document has already been prepared, but it will be finalised by the participants.

The PML-N has so far been insisting that a grand opposition alliance should be formed to dislodge Gen Musharraf. However, a central leader said on Wednesday that now his party was not expecting that a new coalition would emerge after the MPC. Instead, he said, the PML-N would like all opposition parties should get united on a single point: riddance from dictatorship and putting the country back on the rails.

“That all parties should form a broad-based alliance is just a proposal,” he clarified.

He said reservations of any party about it would also be discussed.

The PPP doesn’t want to form an alliance with the MMA, and it is for this reason that the PPP chairperson is not participating in the MPC.

PPP leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim said recently that there was an understanding between Mian Nawaz Sharif and Ms Bhutto about the latter’s abstention from the MPC.

However, a PML-N leader said: “It would have been better if she had participated in the MPC. But if not, maybe she has some reasons for it.”

He said the people would judge the MPC by its decisions. They would monitor whether the participants took decisions for the country or their own interests, he said, adding that the international community was also waiting for the decisions of the conference.