ISLAMABAD, July 2: Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) MNA Kunwar Khalid Younus on Saturday said his party would not be discouraged by the refusal of the opposition parties to attend its all parties conference (APC), scheduled to held on Sunday. Talking to Dawn, the MQM MNA said the Muttahida had invited all political, religious and nationalist parties to attend the APC in order to chalk out a strategy and to formulate a code of conduct so that the local government elections could be held in a peaceful manner.

He said that except the Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), no other party had informed the MQM that it would not participate in the APC. He said the MQM had only come to know through the press reports that the MMA and the ARD component parties had declined the MQM’s invitation to attend the APC.

It may be mentioned that all major opposition parties had announced on Friday that they would boycott the MQM’s APC. The JI said it could not take part in the APC as it believed that the MQM was responsible for the targeted killings taking place in Karachi. Similarly, the PPP and the PML-N, the two component parties of the ARD, had stated that the MQM was the part of the government which had been carrying out political victimization of the opponents in the country.

The ARD secretary-general Iqbal Zafar Jhagra had said as the alliance president, Makhdoom Javed Hashmi, and former speaker Syed Yousuf Raza Gillani were still behind the bars due to the “victimization policy” of the government, the ARD could not participate in the APC, convened by one of the major ruling coalition partners.

Criticizing the statement of former Karachi Nazim Naimatullah Khan in which he expressed the fear that there could be bloodshed in Karachi on the occasion of the local bodies polls, Mr Younus said the former Nazim wanted to terrorize the people in order to ensure a low turnout in the elections.