PESHAWAR, April 16: The Grand National Alliance has urged the joint opposition in parliament to accept the Legal Framework Order as “a bridge between the army and civil society” and refrain from confrontational politics.

Speaking at the Peshawar Press Club’s Guest Hour programme on Wednesday, GNA general secretary Senator Mohammad Durrani said the present democratic set-up had come into existence because of the LFO.

Referring to the role the opposition had played during successive martial law regimes, he said some of the opposition leaders had been part and parcel of those regimes. LFO, he added, was nothing except a transitional arrangement devised to transfer power to elected representatives.

He urged the opposition to realize the situation on international borders and find out a negotiated-solution for the political deadlock. After the Iraq debacle, he said, the US had imposed sanctions on Kahuta laboratories to pressure Pakistan to cap its nuclear programme. This situation had made the Indian leadership brave enough to hurl threats on the country, he added. The country was passing through a dangerous phase and it was not time of confrontation with the president, he said.

During the last three years, he claimed, his party had kept pressure on the military government to hold elections within three years and transfer power to elected people. Now it was the duty of the opposition parties to cooperate with the president, he added.

The Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal, he said, was supporting the president in the NWFP, but in Islamabad it was against him. “All credit goes to superior courts and army for paving a way for the peaceful transition of power to the civilian leadership. President Pervez Musharraf has made an initiative for the transfer of power in a gradual way, and opposition must behave in the same positive way,” the senator said.

Mr Durrani suggested that a house committee comprising senators and MNAs should hold discussions on the LFO and prepare a solution acceptable to both the government and opposition.