October 04, 2007	Thursday	Ramazan 21, 1428

ISLAMABAD, Oct 3: The apparent cohesion of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League is disappearing fast and a large number of its members are openly criticising the move to grant total indemnity to Benazir Bhutto in corruption cases.

Party sources told Dawn that a team of PML-Q leaders had a two-hour meeting with President Gen Pervez Musharraf to bring to his notice the party’s sentiments about the talks with the People’s Party.

The Minister of State for Information, Tariq Azeem Khan, said that the Leaguers had told the president that the party’s leadership was not ready to disregard corruption charges against Ms Bhutto.

Minister for Textiles Mushtaq Ali Cheema and the party’s parliamentary secretary, Rajab Ali Baloch, held an exhaustive meeting with the PML’s president, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, on Wednesday in which they openly criticised attempts to rescue the PPP chairperson from corruption charges, saying it would negate the party’s stance.

They made it clear that they would vote for President Musharraf, but after the presidential election, would re-evaluate their “affiliations”.

Sources in the PML claimed that a recent meeting between Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi and NWFP Chief Minister Akram Durrani and a couple of meetings Chaudhry Shujaat had with MMA secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rahman had saved the NWFP Assembly from dissolution.

The source recalled Chaudhry Shujaat’s remarks made a few days ago that he would hold his cards close to his chest. “He has played his first card carefully and successfully.”

A federal minister said that he would quit the Muslim League once its ‘wedlock’ with the PPP was formalised because he had been one of the biggest critics of the party and its leader. The minister was, however, facing considerable trouble finding acceptance in the party he was once part of because of his support for the Musharraf-led government.

A Leaguer told Dawn that he saw ‘very little chance’ of harmony between Gen Musharraf and Ms Bhutto even if they struck a power-sharing accord for the time being.

The sources said that the PPP dissidents — who initially formed PPP-Patriots and later joined the PML — also opposed such a deal because they would have no political future in case of a power-sharing arrangement between the People’s Party and President Musharraf.

NAWAZ FACTOR: Muslim League leaders, the sources claimed, were also betting on the PML-N to strike a seat adjustment deal with the former to defeat the PPP in the upcoming polls in Punjab. They contended that Saudi Arabia had eased restrictions on Mian Nawaz Sharif after a nod from Islamabad and the League’s leadership support for Mr Sharif’s return to the country after Eid.

A PML source said that both the president’s camp and Ms Bhutto were trying to outsmart each other as they were unable to cancel out the influence of mutual ‘guarantors’ in the political arena.

In the first phase of the political game, the source said, the government engaged the PPP as a result of which Makhdoom Amin Fahim entered the presidential race to give the process a much-needed legitimacy and even if he withdrew his papers at the last moment, he would scarcely be able to reject the whole process.

Many senior PPP leaders, they said, were sceptical about the possibility of a deal with Gen Musharraf and that, too, with the active support of the United States because in their view, it would cost the party its credentials.

They think that the next elections will be contested on the back of pro- and anti-American sentiments.