LONDON, March 18 : The multi-party conference scheduled to be held here on March 24-25 has been postponed, confirmed former chief minister of Punjab and PML-N president Shahbaz Sharif while talking to Dawn here on Sunday.

A new date for holding the conference convened by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif from the ARD platform will be announced later after consulting leaders of the parties who have consented to attend, party sources said.

Meanwhile, Mr Shahbaz Sharif called upon his party workers to be ready for the immediate struggle that lies ahead on March 21 and follow the party leadership’s guidelines for a peaceful protest that would ensure that another nail “is put in the coffin of dictatorship” on that day.

In a statement issued here, the PML-N president praised the party workers for supporting their arrested colleagues and said “this spirit of camaraderie must be maintained by party workers and the arrested workers must be provided all help, including legal assistance”.

Mr Sharif said that mistreatment of the party’s women workers by the police was highly condemnable but “this must not dissuade these daughters of Pakistan from participating ever more forcefully in protests during the coming days”.He said that the country was passing through a decisive phase in which the objective of restoring constitutional rule was within sight. The entire nation has “set its eyes upon these true Pakistanis who are today leading the political struggle to save the country”, he added.

Ahmed Hassan adds from Islamabad: The decision to postpone the conference was communicated by the party’s chief Nawaz Sharif in a meeting with PML-N’s chairman Raja Zafarul Haq.

According to a press release, the decision was made in the light of the tense political condition in the country arising out of the government-judiciary standoff.

The meeting’s postponement appeared to be the result of a mini-conference organised by the PML-N in Islamabad on Saturday, attended by all opposition parties except the PPP, which boycotted it contending that it was not consulted on the issue.

The Islamabad meeting decided to accelerate anti-Musharraf campaign besides supporting lawyers in the crisis created by the presidential reference against the Chief Justice of Pakistan Mr Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

The conference decided that at a time when the opposition parties were supporting the struggle for the restoration of the judiciary’s prestige, their leaving for London would hurt the opposition’s cause.

Only leader of the opposition in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rahman of the JUI-F insisted upon holding the conference on time while leaders of other parties, including the Pakistan Tehrik-i-Insaf, the Awami National Party, and the Muttahida Majli-i-Amal called for its postponement.