ISLAMABAD, Sept 17: President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday called the Senate session to begin on Thursday morning.

There was no immediate explanation from the government about the urgency of summoning the upper house at an unusually short notice of less than a day.

The session will begin at the Parliament House at 11 am on Thursday, an announcement by the Senate’s secretariat on Wednesday evening said.

The move came only a day after Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali held an inconclusive session of talks with the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal over the Legal Framework Order and three days before the president was to leave for the US trip, mainly to address the UN General Assembly in New York.

The announcement led to speculation about the possibility of President Musharraf addressing a joint sitting of parliament.

Political circles, however, dismissed the possibility, saying that the president was not expected to address the parliament before a settlement on the LFO issue.

It will appear odd if the joint session is called at such a short notice as the president is due to leave on Saturday for the Sept 21-24 trip, sources said.

The last session of the Senate was adjourned on June 17 amid a row between the ruling coalition and the opposition parties in parliament about a four-nation Western tour that the president had already begun.

“It has come all of the sudden,” People’s Party Parliamentarians’ spokesman Senator Farhatullah Babar said about the summoning of the Senate session.

He said his party had inquired from the Senate secretariat only on Tuesday about the next session and “they said they had no information about it.”

Senate Secretary Shahid Iqbal said that the Senate secretariat had no further information in this regard, adding that it had notified after receiving the government’s instructions on Wednesday.