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ISLAMABAD: The Pakistan People`s Party plans to take a `disciplinary action` against former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi for making public statements against the party leadership, sources in the party told on Monday.
Although Mr Qureshi has been issuing statements which are not in line with the party policy for about three months, the party leadership has now decided to issue a show-cause notice for his latest assault on the leadership during a press conference in Lahore last week in which he called for resignation of President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani over the May 2 US operation in Abbottabad.
“The party leadership will take an appropriate action against Mr Qureshi,” PPP information secretary Qamar Zaman Kaira told this correspondent.
He, however, said no show-cause notice had so far been issued to the former foreign minister.
On the other hand, Mr Qureshi said he was ready to receive any notice from the party leadership and would give a befitting reply.
“If I receive a show-cause notice, then I will also issue three to four such notices to some other people,” he said while talking to Dawn on Monday.
Mr Qureshi regretted that the party leadership wanted to keep him away from the central executive committee meetings despite the fact that he was still an office-bearer and his CEC membership was intact.
“If they do so, it will be undemocratic,” he said.
The former minister, who was not invited to the last CEC meeting held in Naudero on April 4, said that in fact he had called upon the party leadership to convene the CEC meeting on a two-point agenda — the Abbottabad operation and the party`s decision to form an alliance with the Pakistan Muslim League-Q.
He said he wanted to convey the feelings of party`s workers and many key leaders who were angry with the decision to join hands with the PML-Q.
After the last-minute refusal by Mr Qureshi to take oath as minister for water and power in the cabinet reshuffle in February, many PPP leaders launched an attack on him and `condemned` him for his alleged act of `blackmailing the party`.
The then information secretary, Fauzia Wahab, even announced that the party leadership had decided to take disciplinary action against him for humiliating the leadership and also said that Mr Qureshi had no future in the party.
Similar statements were made by Information Minister Firdous Ashiq Awan and former minister Raja Pervez Ashraf.
Mr Qureshi, according to sources in the party, was angered by President Zardari`s move to stop him from issuing any statement as foreign minister on the issue of a US national Raymond Davis who had killed two Pakistanis and assigning this task to Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
Mr Qureshi created a difficult situation for the government when being a former foreign minister he declared that the kind of blanket immunity Washington sought for Davis, was not endorsed by the official record of the foreign ministry.
Mr Zardari, the sources said, was also unhappy with Mr Qureshi for `intentionally skipping` a meeting between him and a US Congress delegation on the Davis issue.
