ISLAMABAD, April 18: Pakistan People’s Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto on Wednesday talked to Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) Senator Ishaq Dar by telephone in Dubai, assuring him that her party would not strike any deal with the Musharraf regime and media reports in this regard were untrue, sources told Dawn.

The sources said Ms Bhutto contacted Senator Dar after receiving information that the PML-N leadership was perturbed over reports regarding a deal between the PPP and President Pervez Musharraf, particularly after publication of her interview in a British daily.

They said the former prime minister had clarified her position and assured Mr Dar that the PPP was committed to every word of the Charter of Democracy. She told the PML-N leader not to believe any report on the issue.

She said she had directed her party leadership to counter the government’s ‘disinformation campaign’.

Meanwhile, responding to a statement of Leader of the Opposition in the National Assembly Maulana Fazlur Rehman that the country would break up if the PPP came into power, a spokesman for Ms Bhutto, Farhatullah Babar, said the remarks showed the maulana’s “contempt for the will of the people”.

“Maulana Fazl’s remarks imply that the people of Pakistan are faced with the stark choice of accepting the military rule in perpetuity or seeing the country break up if they vote any other government into power through free and fair elections,” Mr Babar said in a statement.