ISLAMABAD, Feb 10: President Asif Ali Zardari is unhappy with the handling of the PIA issue by the people concerned in the government and wants an early and amicable solution, without affecting the country's relations with Turkey, PPP sources told on Thursday. They said that President Zardari had forewarned the outgoing Defence Minister, Chaudhry Ahmed Mukhtar, about the possibility of an agitation and directed him to take unions and PIA employees into confidence to remove the misconception about “misleading” reports of signing of an agreement between PIA and the Turkish Airlines.

At the previous meeting of the party's core committee, Mr Zardari had asked the defence minister to explain through media the actual position about talks between PIA and Turkish Airlines for cooperation. The talks followed the president's meeting with his Turkish counterpart Abdullah Gul.

It is because of the minister's failure to comply with the directive that the president had kept him out of the talks between authorities and PIA employees' unions.

Instead of the defence minister, Interior Minister Rehman Malik held talks with representatives of PIA unions in Islamabad.

Before Mr Malik's talks, Labour Minister Syed Khurshid Ahmed Shah, as head of the government's committee, held talks with protesting employees in Karachi.

The defence minister also skipped the meeting of the National Assembly's Standing Committee on Defence on Wednesday and some opposition members belonging to PML-Q raised the issue of his absence.

Mr Mukhtar claimed that he had suggested that instead of him, the labour and interior ministers hold talks with PIA employees. Moreover, he said, he had never held talks with unions in the past and that the job had always been handled by people at the secretary level.

He, however, denied that the president had issued him any directive on the issue during the party's core committee meeting.

“I have told the prime minister that I will be the last person to talk to them (union people),” he said, and pointed fingers at the Punjab government for its perceived support to “trouble-makers”.

“Without the support of the local administration, you cannot block roads and stage sit-ins,” he said about three days of protests outside Islamabad and Lahore airports.