LAHORE, Oct 9: Mian Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo, a senior leader of the ruling PML, has demanded that a meeting of the party’s central working committee should be called immediately to discuss the National Reconciliation Ordinance, promulgated after the talks between President Musharraf’s emissaries and PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto.

He told reporters on Tuesday that although the NRO had come under discussion in the cabinet and the PML parliamentary party meetings, the ruling party had yet to examine it.

He said once the NRO was discussed by the PML, everybody would get an opportunity to express his opinion for or against the ordinance. After that, he said, nobody would be left with any justification to speak against it.

A former chief minister of Punjab, Wattoo praised PPP Chairperson Benazir Bhutto for her flexible attitude as a result of which the two sides could reach an agreement.

Asked whether the government should extend a similar ‘olive branch’ to former prime minister Mian Nawaz Sharif for a broad-based national reconciliation, Wattoo said the exiled former prime minister was inflexible and rigid in his attitude. —Political Correspondent