LAHORE, Sept 15: The Jamaat-i-Islami believes that Gen Pervez Musharraf will accept opposition’s demands about the supremacy of constitution and parliament only if there is a pressure on him from his army colleagues.

“The general is not serious on the LFO talks, and it seems that he will come to terms on the issue only under some internal pressure,” secretary-general Syed Munawwar Hasan says.

The talks would succeed only when the army would be ready to play its role, he said.

Referring to Gen Aziz’s statement a couple of months ago in which he had stated that uniform and politics could not go together, the Jamaat leader asserted that it had exposed Gen Musharraf’s support base in his ‘constituency’, besides forcing him to activate a dialogue with the opposition.

About prolonged parleys on the LFO, he said while dealing with a civilian set-up all cards were known to the opposition, this was not the case in a military regime.

Reacting to Shujaat Husain’s assertion that the LFO and uniform were settled issues, he said some elements in secret agencies did not want to see successful end to parleys and the Chaudhry’s statement “seemed to be a creation of the agencies.”

He claimed Mr Husain had failed to deliver and it was for this reason that National Security Council secretary Tariq Aziz was included in the government team.

“It is Tariq Aziz and not the Chaudhry who knows weaknesses of Gen Musharraf, and it is for this reason that the former is managing the show now.”

He said the proposal for extending Gen Musharraf’s tenure till October, 2004, had come from the government itself on the plea that many senior army officers would retire by that time and Gen Musharraf wanted to make the new appointments by himself.

He alleged that agencies were working on the MMA MPs in an abortive bid to make a dent in the religious alliance. However, he said the alliance would remain intact.

Admitting differences of opinion within the MMA on various issues, he, however, hastened to add that all decisions were taken unanimously by the alliance.