September 20, 2008	Saturday	Ramazan 19, 1429

LAHORE, Sept 19: PML-N chief Mian Nawaz Sharif has ruled out an alliance with the PML-Q and said had that been a possibility the two parties would have become allies before the Sept 6 presidential poll.

He was talking to the reporters at the Lahore airport on his return from London on Friday morning.

He said he saw no threat to his party’s government in Punjab and the elements conspiring against it would fail in their designs.

Answering a question about US attacks on tribal areas, the former prime minister said it was difficult to understand the American policy.

He demanded that ‘secret agreements’ reached with Washington about such attacks be made public. He said he would like to know if the attacks were a reward for the services Islamabad had rendered for US interests over the past eight years.

He said that reinstatement of judges in piecemeal was humiliation of the judiciary and a mockery of the justice system.

He told a questioner that the PML-N’s stand on the 17th Amendment remained the same as it was when it signed the Charter of Democracy with late PPP leader Benazir Bhutto.