LAHORE, Aug 12: ARD chairman Nawabzada Nasrullah said on Tuesday that the alliance would not hold parleys with the government on any issue, including the LFO, unless Gen Pervez Musharraf quit the president’s office.

He was speaking at a seminar organized by the ARD Lawyers Forum at the Lahore High Court.

“The situation has come to a dead end and the only way out is the constitution of an impartial election commission and a government of national consensus following Gen Musharraf’s decision to step down as president.

“Pakistan came into being as a result of a long political process and not because of army’s policies. The political process can only be generated within the country once the true representatives are elected through an independent electoral process and Gen Musharraf allows the people to decide their fate on their own”.

He asked all the political parties to launch a decisive war against the dictatorship from the ARD’s platform on Aug 14. He claimed that ARD’s meeting at Mochi Gate would be the first sequel to the war.

The veteran politician blamed the army rulers of tarnishing the image of the country abroad and alleged that they had been subverting the constitution every now and then to enforce their dictatorial rules.

He said the LFO was not new to the people of Pakistan. Gen Yahya Khan had also used the same extra-constitutional instrument to rule the country.

“Only the 1973 Constitution translated the public will into a balanced system of governance, ensured provincial autonomy and sovereignty of parliament. The ARD’s one-point agenda is the restoration of the constitution as it would solve many long standing legal and constitutional issues,” the Nawabzada asserted.

According to the ARD chief, Gen Musharraf recently said that no country would stand by Pakistan in the hour of need. “This was a desperate acknowledgement of the failure of the diplomatic policies Gen Musharraf had been adopting since October 1999 which isolated the country from the rest of the world.”

PML-N acting president Makhdoom Javed Hashmi said his party would not compromise on the LFO as it was against the spirit of the parliamentary politics.

He made it clear that the PML-N would not hold any deliberations with Gen Musharraf whether or not former prime minister Nawaz Sharif was allowed to return to the country.

“I predict that whatever flexibility the MMA shows on the LFO, the president would go by his own intentions and wouldn’t listen to anyone”.

Mr Hashmi alleged that both the PPP and the PML-N had been victimized in the name of corruption. The people who had openly indulged into corrupt practices were promised top slots in the current set up.