ISLAMABAD, Sept 23: The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal on Tuesday rejected the draft constitutional proposals handed over to the alliance leadership by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain last week, and decided to send a written draft of counter proposals to Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali.

The MMA supreme council, which met here with its President Allama Shah Ahmed Noorani in the chair, also decided to launch a mass contact campaign from next month for which other opposition parties would also be invited.

The religious parties alliance felt that the three major issues — the president’s army uniform, his discretionary powers and the retirement age of the judges — were altogether ignored in the official draft proposals. It said that there could be no compromise on the key issues on which it had engaged itself in dialogue for ten months.

The meeting was attended by MMA vice-president and its parliamentary leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed, secretary-general Maulana Fazlur Rahman, vice-presidents Maulana Samiul Haq and Allama Sajid Naqvi, Liaquat Baloch, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, Pir Ijaz Hashmi and Maulana Abdul Aziz Hanif.

Prof Sajid Mir was represented by Maulana Abdul Aziz Hanif, party’s secretary-general, as the former was abroad.

Besides preparing counter proposals on the three contentious issues, the MMA also discussed in detail the mass contact campaign during the three-hour-long meeting.

The alliance decided to constitute a committee headed by its president Allama Shah Ahmed Noorani and comprised Liaquat Baloch and Hafiz Hussain Ahmed to deliver its counter proposals to Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali on Wednesday.

Replying to newsmen queries after the meeting, Maulana Fazlur Rahman said that the MMA would no more engage itself in talks with the government as the government had backed out of the agreed formula prepared in the Lahore talks. He said the MMA would not wait for a response to its proposals from the government’s side and would concentrate on its countrywide mass-contact drive.

He refused to respond to a query about the police batoncharge of the workers of a rival faction of the JUI in Mardan on Monday in which some MPAs were also injured and as a result of which the JUI(S) had withdrawn its support to the NWFP government. He said all the grievances of the rival JUI faction would be addressed and redressed.

He said the draft constitutional proposals prepared by the S. M. Zafar-led government team in consultation with the MMA team in Lahore and the draft proposals sent by the government differed on fundamental issues and hence was not acceptable.

In reply to a question, he said the MMA would no more accept any invitation for talks even if it came from the prime minister, adding that the draft counter proposals were being delivered as a moral obligation in response to the official delegation led by PML chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain which had delivered the constitutional package to MMA chief Allama Shah Ahmed Noorani.

He said the MMA would make public both the government’s draft and the proposals that were prepared by the religious parties alliance after they were delivered to the prime minister.

Earlier briefing newsmen, Liaquat Baloch said the MMA had decided to seek clarification from Prime Minister Zafarullah Jamali on certain issues through its counter proposals.

He said the MMA would solicit the support of the ARD and other opposition parties for the mass contact campaign on the one-point agenda of restoration of the Constitution as it had existed on October 12, 1999.

Asked if the MMA’s mass contact campaign would take the shape of a movement against the government, Mr Baloch said the campaign would also focus on crucial public problems like unemployment, price hike and other issues.

He said the MMA differed with the government’s foreign policy, specially its handling of the Afghanistan, Iraq and Middle East issues. He said scores of Afghans were being killed every day due to the wrong policies of the regime, whereas sending of Pakistani troops to Iraq would be strongly opposed.