ISLAMABAD, Aug 21 In an attempt to distance itself from former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf, the Chattha-led faction of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q on Friday apologised to the nation for supporting “a regime led by a military dictator which caused judicial turmoil, killed nearly 100 innocent people in the Lal Masjid operation, murdered Nawab Akbar Bugti and promulgated the NRO”.

The party's leaders said at a news conference at the residence of the faction's chairman, Hamid Nasir Chattha, that they should have resigned when “the regime was taking such unholy actions”, but they had been kept in the dark by the Chaudhrys who were “responsible for the cover up because they were directly in touch with the former military dictator and neither took the party nor the cabinet into confidence”.

Salim Saifullah, Humayun Akhtar and Khurshid Mehmood Kasuri were also present at the press conference.

They said they would like to “apologise to the people of Balochistan, who suffered because of our government's wrong policies”.

According to them, they had decided to run the party on purely democratic lines and through 'collective leadership' instead of turning it into another 'family party'.

The PML-Q splinter group said the faction would “work as real and effective opposition”, because at present, the PML-N and the “League run by the Chaudhrys” were playing the role of “a friendly opposition”.

Mr im Saifullah said “We admit that accepting the NRO was a crime because it was no law at all.”

They brushed aside speculations that their faction would merge or ally itself with the PML-N.