LONDON, Aug 31: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto had a 45-minute meeting with British Foreign Secretary David Milliband on Friday morning and the two are said to have discussed the current political situation obtaining in Pakistan with special focus on the forthcoming elections.
Mr Milliband was in Islamabad just before the July 26 Abu Dhabi meeting between Gen Pervez Musharraf and Benazir giving currency to speculations that he was instrumental in setting up the meeting.
Mr Milliband’s special adviser Mark Layall Grant, who during his tenure as his country’s High Commissioner in Pakistan, had reportedly played the role of a mediator between the president and the former prime minister, was also said to have been present on the sidelines during the Abu Dhabi meeting.
When questioned, both the British Foreign Office and the PPP refused to go into the details of what had transpired between Benazir and Milliband during their meeting. But one cannot rule out the possibility of the two discussing the progress or otherwise in her ongoing dialogue with Gen Musharraf.
The PPP insiders said that Musharraf had failed to meet the deadline of Thursday when the party had expected to receive the president’s response in writing on Benazir’s counter-proposals on the draft of the deal that Musharraf’s three top-level emissaries had discussed with the PPP chairperson earlier in the week.
The response, they said, was to contain a comprehensive draft of agreed package of constitutional amendments in the shape of a memorandum of understanding.
They said if Gen Musharraf failed to send such a draft by Saturday morning, Benazir would most probably break the talks and reconsider her position vis-à-vis her future course of action.
In any case, according to her travel schedule Benazir is
expected to go back to Abu Dhabi on Sunday and from there she would proceed to the US perhaps to inform her US point-man Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to the UN, that she had done everything she could, and at a heavy political cost to herself, to facilitate a peaceful transfer of power from army to civilian set-up and that now she would chart her own course of action.
The PPP camp here appears to be both despondent and happy. It is despondent that Benazir after all could not get Gen Musharraf to doff the uniform and remove the legal and constitutional hurdles blocking her return to Pakistan and become prime minister for the third time.
But they also seem happy that after all Benazir has been saved from the ignominy of being seen by history as the person who saved a military dictator and helped him prolong his unpopular rule by entering into a clandestine deal with him.
Meanwhile, the Central Executive Committee of the PPP met on Friday afternoon with Ms Bhutto in the chair. The meeting is expected to continue till Saturday afternoon.During the meeting, most CEC members are reported to have urged Ms Bhutto to break talks with the government and plan for return home.
