October 19, 2008	Sunday	Shawwal 19, 1429

ISLAMABAD, Oct 18: The ongoing in-camera session of the parliament on the country’s security situation has proved a blessing in disguise for the two main but rival factions of the Pakistan Muslim League (PML), which have reportedly come closer to each other.

According to sources, a joint meeting of the PML-N and PML-Q leaders would be held on Monday or Tuesday in the Parliament House to finalise a joint strategy to counter the government’s move to bring a resolution in support of the so-called ‘war on terror’ at the end of the joint session of the parliament on Thursday.

This will be the first formal meeting between the two factions of the PML after the Feb 18 elections and according to political experts the two factions are fast moving towards reunification. The contacts were established between the leaderships of the two parties when the PPP-led coalition decided to move an impeachment resolution against former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf in August and later at the time of the presidential elections held in September.

According to the sources, the PML-N has decided to move its own resolution in the parliament and it has already started contacting other parliamentary groups, including some of the parties presently part of the government, to seek their support.

When contacted, a PML-N leader confirmed that the party had prepared a draft of the resolution which would be tabled in the parliament as an alternative to the government’s resolution. He claimed that even chief of Jamiat Ulema-i-Islam-F Maulana Fazlur Rehman had assured them that he would attend the meeting of the opposition parties next week.

He said if the government insisted on its own resolution, then the opposition parties would call for a voting on the resolutions which was a democratic way.

The PML-N leader disclosed that party chief Nawaz Sharif had written a letter to Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in which he had given some suggestions regarding the future policy on the war against terror. He said the letter would be sent to the prime minister in a day or two.

Giving details, he said the PML-N chief had proposed to the government to form a joint parliamentary committee to oversee the affairs relating to the efforts to curb terrorism and militancy in the country. However, he said, the PML-N believed that the committee should be powerful to make decisions and even the intelligence agencies should be bound to share information with the committee members.