ISLAMABAD, Jan 15: Pakis-tan Muslim League-Q rejected on Tuesday a proposal for setting up a national government, terming it ‘technically and politically impractical’.

Addressing a news conference, the party’s secretary information Tariq Azeem said: “first of all, the setting up of a national unity government is not possible because there is not sufficient time for such an exercise and elections are due in only five weeks. Secondly, no party will agree on proportional representation in such a set-up”. President Pervez Musharraf has also rejected the idea, although the proposal had been initiated by the presidential camp and major opposition parties, PML-N and PPP, have also refused to be part of any set-up headed by President Musharraf.

Mr Azeem claimed that his party would win enough seats to become at least the second largest party in parliament.

Mr Azeem said: “How can you underestimate the chances of PML-Q in the next elections, especially when former legislators have done a great deal of development work in their constituencies”.

When it was pointed out that people blame the PML-Q for the acute shortage of flour and energy throughout the country, he claimed that the party’s vote bank was intact.

He also dismissed as ‘illogical’ the opposition’s demand to suspend the local government and said: “Nowhere in the world are local bodies suspended (during elections)”. Such demands, he said, were excuses to run away from polls.

Mr Azeem rejected PPP’s demand for a UN-led probe into the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. He said the UN had no organisation of its own to investigate such cases and even if it was involved its role would remain that of a coordinator and facilitator between the country which had the expertise and Pakistan.

He dismissed as incorrect the opposition’s optimism derived from an IRI poll and said a poll by the same body on presidential primaries in the US had proved wrong.