ARD, APDM fail to agree on judges : Accord on 13 points, consultations to continue
By Our Staff Reporter
ISLAMABAD, Dec 6: A joint committee of the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) and the All Pakistan Democratic Movement (APDM) on Thursday finalised a 15-point charter of demands, but without reaching consensus on the reinstatement of the deposed judges and setting a deadline for the government to meet the demands.
Talking to reporters after the third meeting of the committee at the Parliament House, Opposition Leader in the Senate, Raza Rabbani, said they had prepared a 15-point charter of demands and there was a complete unanimity on 13 of them.
Mr Rabbani said the committee members had not been able to reach consensus on two issues, including the reinstatement of judges.
He did not disclose the other issue on which the members had failed to reach an understanding. But a source told Dawn that the committee members had differences on the issue of giving a timeframe to the government for acceptance of their demands before taking a final decision on boycotting the elections or otherwise.
Mr Rabbani said the committee had decided to leave the contentious issues to be decided by the leadership of the ARD and the APDM.
Thursday’s meeting was attended, on the ARD side, by Mr Rabbani, Senator Dr Safdar Abbasi, Naveed Malik and Abdul Qadeer Khamosh, and on the APDM side, by PML (N) information secretary Ahsan Iqbal, Senator Ishaq Dar, MMA Senator Prof Khurshid Ahmed and Senator Abdul Rahim Mandokhel.
Sources said that the APDM members wanted to include the demand for the reinstatement of sacked judges on top of the demands while the ARD members wanted not to press for this demand.
The two sides tried to find a middle way during their three-day meetings, but failed to do so after their top leadership told them not to show any flexibility on the judges issue.
Former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, as heads of the ARD and the APDM, on Monday had agreed that their decision about taking part in the polls or otherwise would depend on President Pervez Musharraf’s response to their charter of demands for ensuring free and fair elections.
Briefing the media after their meeting, the PPP and PML (N) leaders announced the formation of an eight-member committee to prepare a draft of the charter to be presented to the government.
