ISLAMABAD, March 14: Amid a new confrontation with the ruling PPP, the leadership of the opposition PML-N will meet in Lahore on Thursday to decide how they would act, and possibly protest, during President Asif Ali Zardari’s address to a joint sitting of both houses of parliament on March 22, sources told Dawn here on Monday.

The sources said there was a group in the PML-N that believed that the presidential address was a good opportunity for the party to pay the PPP back for a rumpus in the Punjab Assembly after its ouster from the provincial coalition.

The joint sitting was originally due on March 21, but Information and Broadcasting Minister Firdaus Ashiq Awan said on Monday it would now be held on March 22.

Leader of the Opposition in National Assembly Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan, who lashed out at President Zardari at a news conference on Sunday and accused him of playing the ‘Sindh card’ over the issue relating to the chairman of the National Accountability Bureau (NAB), also threatened that his party “would not let the government run parliament smoothly”.

He also said the PML-N could create problems for the president at the time of his mandatory address to the joint sitting of the National Assembly and Senate. “If someone will violate law, parliament will react to it,” he had said, indicating that like in the past when opposition parties created disturbance during presidential addresses, the PML-N could lodge a strong protest at the time of President Zardari’s fourth address to parliament.

On three previous occasion, PML-N members maintained decorum in the house and quietly listened to the president’s speech.

Hours after Chaudhry Nisar’s news conference, President Zardari, who is also the PPP co-chairman, made a telephone call to PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif in London in an apparent move to ease tensions between the two parties and pave the way for a smooth address to the joint sitting.

But despite the move, the PML-N continued its personal attacks on President Zardari on Monday, with former information secretary of the party, Siddiqul Farooque, going to the extent of accusing him of being party to what he called a conspiracy, also involving former president Pervez Musharraf and former Punjab chief minister Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, to eliminate PPP leader Benazir Bhutto.

A senior PML-N member, when contacted, said the party would definitely lodge protest during the presidential address, but the mode of protest would be decided by its leadership in a few days.

The sources said that in the absence of Nawaz Sharif, Thursday’s meeting was expected to be presided over by his brother and Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif, while the party chief would be available on telephone for consultation.