LAHORE, March 31: Pakistan Muslim League (Q) President, Chaudhry Shujaat Husain, says the National Accountability Bureau should be able to hold sitting governments also to accountability and should be headed by a judge.

Ch Shujaat expressed this opinion in a Dawn Dialogue interview here, when he expressed his views on a variety of subjects, some of which may spark a new controversy in political circles.

He thinks that the National Accountability Bureau should hold sitting governments accountable and the organization should be headed by a judge, an idea with which his own party colleagues may differ.

He also said Pakistan and India would have to go beyond their well-entrenched positions on Kashmir to be able to find a solution to the long-standing dispute. He believes third-party mediation is required to settle the dispute and Arab countries will have to be involved in the process.

Chaudhry Shujaat is the ‘king maker’ of the present times and leader of the PML(Q) parliamentary party in the National Assembly. He was first inducted as a minister in Gen Zia’s cabinet after which he remained minister in many subsequent governments. He had excellent relations with Mian Nawaz sharif and, although differences later cropped up, stayed with him till the latter was banished to Saudi Arabia in December 2000.

In the absence of the Sharifs, Chaudhry Shujaat and his cousin Pervaiz Elahi, now the Punjab chief minister, got an opportunity to seize centre stage on the national scene and in Punjab.

The new party crafted by the establishment first elected Mian Muhammad Azhar as president. The Chaudhris played a key role in having him elected to the top position. However, differences between Mian Azhar and the Chaudhris brought the former under pressure to step down. The party elected Chaudhry Shujaat as the new party president.