LAHORE, Aug 15: President Gen Pervez Musharraf during his meeting on Tuesday with Jamaat-i-Islami Amir Qazi Husain Ahmed had expressed the desire that the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal should join hands with the pro-government forces to block the People’s Party’s return to power, Dawn learnt on Thursday.

The general also wanted the Jamaat to review the decision if it had reached or was about to reach an understanding with the PPP about electoral cooperation as a result of Qazi Husain’s meeting with People’s Party Parliamentarians Chairman Makhdoom Amin Faheem on Monday.

However, there was no possibility of the MMA extending any cooperation to the Grand National Alliance, sources said.

“The Jamaat and the military regime are poles apart. There is no shift in the Jamaat’s policy,” they said, brushing aside the possibility of the Jamaat softening its attitude towards the government or its allies.

Qazi Husain was participating in an MMA meeting presided over by Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani in Islamabad on Tuesday when he received an invitation for a meeting with the president. He left the meeting to have a three-hour session with the general on “national and international issues,” according to a press release issued subsequently.

Sources said that at his meeting with the JI leader, Gen Musharraf expressed his determination to block the PPP’s return to power for which purpose he wanted all anti-PPP forces to get together.

It is said that neither the MMA nor the Jamaat-i-Islami individually would cooperate with the pro-Musharraf forces. He who broke ranks with the MMA would be held responsible for damaging the alliance of religious parties of all schools of thought, formed for the first time to give them a separate identity, an alliance leader said.

The reluctance of religious parties to go by Gen Musharraf’s advice will be a serious setback for the government as Qazi Husain Ahmed had met the military ruler making a departure from his party’s earlier stand.

The Jamaat was approached in the past as well with the request that Qazi Husain should meet the president. However, the Jamaat said that its Amir could only meet the general as the head of a party delegation, not alone.

“If the meeting has to take place with Qazi Husain Ahmed telling the general that the Jamaat does not recognize him as a legitimate president or his right to amend the Constitution or take such other steps as he plans to do, there will be no use holding such a meeting,” the JI leaders have been arguing.

It is not clear what made the JI chief change his mind and hold a one-on-one meeting with the military ruler.

A JI leader said the MMA had decided that leaders of the component parties were free to meet the president with the approval of the conglomerate.

Any leader meeting the general is also required to brief his colleagues on the outcome. “Both the requirements were met,” a JI leader said about Qazi Husain’s meeting with Gen Musharraf.

The central executive committee of the Jamaat is due to meet in Mansoora on Friday to discuss the political situation and prepare the party’s election strategy. The outcome of the JI leadership’s meetings with President Musharraf, PPP Chairman Amin Faheem and Tehrik-i-Insaf chief Imran Khan will also come under discussion, party sources say.