LONDON, Oct 3: The Central Executive Committee of the Pakistan People’s Party, which met here on Wednesday with Benazir Bhutto in chair, remained largely divided over the question of whether or not to resign from the assemblies if Gen Pervez Musharraf contested the presidential election on Oct 6 in uniform.

After the seven-hour-long meeting, the PPP chairperson, while leaving the venue, told the waiting media people that the committee would meet again on Thursday morning and the press would be briefed on the outcome in the afternoon.

Insiders said all the three options — resigning, abstaining and participating — were discussed thoroughly during the meeting with most opting for resigning, “but a significant number had also supported the proposal to abstain”.

“Very few were for participating in case Musharraf contested in uniform,” they added.

Those who pleaded for resigning included Senator Raza Rabbani, Shah Mehmood Qureshi and Sherry Rehman. Qasim Zia is said to have told Ms Bhutto that the PPP’s vote bank in Punjab will not be affected even if the party members participated in the presidential election.

On failing to reach a consensus on the issue, Ms Bhutto finally constituted three committees to find out what would be the party’s line of action after it had resigned from the assemblies, abstained from voting or participated in the elections.

When asked about the status of the so-called draft ordinance for across the board indemnity which is said to have been received by the PPP chairperson, sources said the CWC found it to be qualitatively different from what the PPP had demanded.

The sources said Senator Safdar Abbasi was negotiating with the government team in Islamabad to get the draft redesigned to bring it in line with PPP’s requirements.

The sources said that during the first half of the meeting the chairperson received a telephone call from Islamabad presumably from one of the official negotiators or from the president himself.

The meeting resumed after a 10-minute break. At this time, Asif Ali Zardari also joined the discussion.

Anwar Iqbal adds from Washington: Ms Bhutto has accused Islamabad of waging “a typical disinformation campaign” by stating that it plans to lift longstanding corruption charges ahead of her return to the country for the upcoming elections.

“The charges have not been dropped against me,” CNN quoted her as saying. “This is just a typical disinformation campaign by the present regime.”

Ms Bhutto said her talks on a power-sharing deal with President Gen Pervez Musharraf had “totally stalled.” But she indicated that she was prepared to continue negotiating a power-sharing deal with Gen Musharraf.

However, Railway Minister Shaikh Rashid Ahmad, in an interview to CNN insisted that a majority of cabinet ministers had agreed that charges against Ms Bhutto should be lifted and she be allowed to participate in the parliamentary elections scheduled for later this year or early next year.

He said the decision came out of an emergency session called by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz and was expected to be finalised in the coming days. Commenting on the announcement, Ms Bhutto said she was inundated with hundreds of congratulatory calls but had heard nothing from Islamabad about the reported decision.

“I asked the Pakistan People’s Party president to ring up the presidency and see if it was correct,” she said. “They said it was not correct, even though it came from a cabinet minister.”

Ms Bhutto said she still intended to end her self-imposed exile and return to Pakistan on October 18.

CNN noted that Ms Bhutto was walking a fine line between supporting the Musharraf regime by negotiating a power-sharing deal with him and criticising what she called a “military dictatorship” that had rigged the last elections.

Reuters adds: Ms Bhutto said on Wednesday that power-sharing talks with President Gen Musharraf had stalled and she expected her party’s members of parliament to resign.

“Most probably,” she said when asked if that would be the decision.

“I think that the resignation of the Pakistan People’s Party MPs will be a severe blow to the legitimacy of the presidential elections,” she told reporters in London.

Although the PPP is the largest opposition faction it is not in a position to stop Gen Musharraf’s re-election. But it could damage the credibility of the process if it boycotted the vote.

“We don’t want to resign. We don’t want to take this step, but certainly we are being pushed into taking this step by the inability of the present regime to move towards the democratisation of Pakistan,” Ms Bhutto said.