LONDON, Aug 28: Pakistan People’s Party chairperson Benazir Bhutto is understood to have made it clear to the high-powered government emissaries who met her here on Monday that her party would not enter into any deal in which there was a place for a president in military uniform.

Sources said Ms Bhutto told the government side that her party’s parliamentarians would resign if Gen Musharraf attempted to get himself elected president in uniform from the present assemblies.

The PPP would, however, not resign from the assemblies if Gen Musharraf were to contest the election from the present assemblies after leaving his military post but would boycott the proceedings.

She is said to have offered to vote for the president if he were to offer himself for election without uniform by the new assemblies after the next general elections.

It is understood that the PPP chairperson has offered a package of counter-proposals to Gen Musharraf’s emissaries and given the government until Thursday to make public the points of the package which are acceptable to it.

The package is understood to seek a number of simultaneous moves from the government, including doffing of military uniform by the president, amendment to lift the bar on a civilian Musharraf contesting elections, indemnity to governments which ruled between 1988 and 2000, restoration of the Constitution to its position of Oct 11, 1999, removal of the law which

bars people held guilty in absentia from contesting elections, lifting of the ban on prime ministers to contest for the third time, withdrawal of presidential powers to dissolve the assemblies and restoration of powers to the prime minister to appoint governors.

She has proposed that before the general elections a government of national consensus should be formed at the centre and in the provinces with one-third representation of the PPP and the rest for other parties. She is also said to have demanded suspension of the district and tehsil nazims during the election period.

Meanwhile, PPP information secretary Sherry Rehman has issued a press release in which the party appears to be attempting to reassure the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) that it will not negotiate with anyone to oust another elected government, as committed in the Charter of Democracy, “and any negotiations it is engaged in are only to obtain conditions for a return to civilian parliamentary democracy”.

It said the PPP leadership was not seeking any arrangement whereby it would vote for a military dictator.