ISLAMABAD, May 23: Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali and MMA’s Maulana Fazlur Rahman on Friday agreed in principle that the entire legislation, including the agreed items of the Legal Framework Order, will be processed through parliament.
The prime minister, accompanied by PML-Q President and its parliamentary leader Chaudhry Shujaat, met the MMA secretary general at the latter’s parliament lodge apartment.
Maulana Fazlur Rahman emphasized the need of persuading President Gen Pervez Musharraf to give a time-frame for relinquishing the COAS office.
The prime minister and the PML-Q chief assured the MMA leader that they will make every effort to get a positive reply.
Mr Jamali said he would be convening a meeting of the heads of those government-opposition parties who were represented in the eleven-member joint committee next week.
On his return from a week-long visit to Sindh and Balochistan, the prime minister immediately drove to the residence of Chaudhry Shujaat, and from there to the parliament lodge to meet the MMA leader.
MMA’s Hafiz Hussian Ahmed was also present during the 90-minute talks.
It was agreed that while the prime minister and PML-Q president will take the military leadership into confidence on constitutional issues, including the question of president’s army uniform, Maulana Fazl will brief the MMA’s top brass, including Maulana Shah Ahmed Noorani and Qazi Hussain Ahmed.
“If an agreement is reached on the main issues then the Jamali-led coalition parties along with the MMA, who together make a comfortable two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, will indemnify all the agreed points of the LFO,” MMA’s Hafiz Hussain Ahmed told this reporter.
Later, talking to newsmen the prime minister said: “We are working for ending the crisis and the opposition’s attitude was positive.”
He denied that he had held the opposition responsible for the Commonwealth’s refusal to end the suspension of Pakistan’s membership. “In fact,” he said, “I had pointed to the delay in arriving at a settlement on the LFO which the Commonwealth had cited as a reason for not allowing Pakistan to return to its fold.”
He said every party “has its own stand” on the issues which “have very well been reflected” in the joint government-opposition constitutional committee’s report presented to him by the committee chairman and Speaker National Assembly Chaudhry Amir Hussain immediately after his arrival in the federal capital.
While Maulana Fazlur Rahman said the crisis could be resolved amicably if the president extended cooperation instead of making it a matter of ego, Chaudhry Shujaat expressed the hope that the issue would be resolved before the summoning of the National Assembly’s budget session.
When asked why the president was not showing any flexibility regarding the opposition’s demand, the prime minister said the president had clearly admitted before senior journalists that he was convinced that the offices of the president and the COAS should not remain in one person. He, however, had asked the opposition to leave the timing for the separation of the two offices to him, Mr Jamali added.
Maulana Fazlur Rahman said: “All of us want that supremacy of parliament is restored.”
He claimed that the opposition had played a positive role throughout the constitutional committee’s parleys.