ISLAMABAD, Jan 30: President Pervez Musharraf had an unannounced meeting in Davos with Saman Ahsan, daughter of Aitzaz Ahsan, the incarcerated leader of lawyers, to persuade her father to give up opposition to his regime, it is learnt.

“Saman was not convinced with whatever views he put across,” said Mr Ahsan’ wife Bushra Aitzaz while, confirming that the president had had a one-to-one meeting with her daughter on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum.

Saman, 30, works with the WEF in Geneva as project manager of the Council of 100 Leaders (C100), an initiative for dialogue between Muslims and the West. The meeting took place through Klaus Schwab, the founder and executive chairman of the WEF, who is a friend of former prime minister Shaukat Aziz.

Mr Aziz attended the WEF where he met corporate leaders and spent substantial time with President Musharraf.

Mr Ahsan’s daughter is reported to have told her friends and colleagues after the meeting that the president had asked her to convince her father “not to come in my way”.

Mrs Aitzaz said the president had not given any message to her daughter.

She said the WEF executive chairman had raised the issues of democracy, removal and detention of independent judges and assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in his meeting with the president and mentioned that the father of “one of my forum members is still in detention in Pakistan”. This led to a meeting between the president and Saman.

She denied that Mr Ahsan’s permission had been sought for the meeting.

She said that during the meeting the president levelled allegations against the deposed chief justice of Pakistan and referred to the Supreme Court’s decision against a reference filed in this regard.