PESHAWAR, Jan 16: Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy general secretary Iqbal Zafar Jhagra on Tuesday said that during the multi-party conference (mpc), the opposition would hammer out a joint strategy to counter President Gen Pervez Musharraf’s move to get himself re-elect from the present assemblies.

“In case the MPC decides to tender collective resignations from the assemblies then all members of the opposition will do so to foil undemocratic forces supporting Gen Musharraf’s re-election as president,” Mr Zafar said, while talking to media people during a ‘Mulaqaat Programme’, organised by the Khyber Union of Journalists at the Peshawar Press Club.

When asked about the MPC meeting schedule, the ARD leader said that so far a date had not been fixed, but would be held in the next few weeks.

Answering a question on internal differences in ARD, he said that all that was part of government strategies to create misunderstandings between the leadership of two major political parties. “Whenever the establishment faces hard time from ARD, such propaganda is launched to demoralise political workers,” he added.

When the questioner cited news reports issued by PPP chairperson Benazir Bhutto about holding back door talks with the government, Mr Jhagra, who is also central leader of the PML-N, said that all that happened because of some misunderstandings between component parties of the alliance and expressed optimism that they would be resolved.

“Look at the MMA, soon after its formation the alliance was facing a number of challenges, but it is still intact,” he argued.

He bewailed the MMA decision of supporting the government on the 17th Constitutional Amendment, but at the same time quoted some speeches of the religious leadership confessing the mistake. “Now we believe that the MMA will never repeat such mistakes in future,” the PML-N leader added.

When a questioner mentioned some public reservations against the Nawaz Sharif family’s decision of leaving the country under a deal with military leaders, the PML-N leader said that the issue had already been discussed in the Supreme Court, and when the honourable court had asked the government to provide a documentary proof, it were unable to provide a single paper of that deal.