ISLAMABAD, Sept 6: The much-trumpeted agreement between the MMA and the president’s negotiating team on contentious items of the LFO was made possible by Gen Musharraf’s personal intervention, sources close to the president told Dawn on Saturday.
The government’s negotiating team led by the ruling PML-Q chief Chaudhry Shujaat was also carefully constituted in which the president’s top aide Tariq Aziz was inducted at the last but decisive moment, the sources said.
The talks which were initiated in November last year were spearheaded at first by the ruling party chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain who later pulled himself out for some time and Prime Minister Jamali pressed himself into the fray.
The change in the venue and the induction of Tariq Aziz in the talks, the sources claimed, indicated that the talks had come under the direct supervision of Gen Pervez Musharraf.
In a meeting held between Gen Musharraf and Chaudhry Shujaat after the president had addressed 40 parliamentarians it was decided that since the issues involved were political the party chief himself should lead the talks rather than the chief executive of the country.
Meanwhile, Syed Kabir Ali Wasti, vice-president of PML-Q, has paid tribute to what he termed the political acumen and competence of party president Chaudhry Shujaat for bringing the MMA closer to an agreement on the LFO.
Talking to Dawn, he said everyone in the party was confident about the capabilities of Chaudhry Shujaat to bring home a positive result out of the lengthy and painstaking parleys.
Sources said the agreement reached in Lahore between the two negotiating teams would most likely pave the way for the long overdue joint session of the both houses of parliament to be addressed by the president.
Other sources see the shifting of the venue of talks to Lahore as a sign that the powers that be had wanted to sideline Prime Minister Jamali in the most decisive phase of the government-MMA talks.
Even though Mr Jamali would convene a meeting of the party heads of both the coalition parties and the MMA sometime next week, he will have little or no say in the finalization of the draft constitutional package as its main items had already been decided, the sources claimed.
Meanwhile, it has been officially confirmed that the PM was not feeling well. The PM’s close aides however said there was nothing much to worry about Mr Jamali’s health.
Some insiders, however, dismissed as pure speculation reports suggesting that President Musharraf was about to sack Mr Jamali and bring in another one of his scores of proteges.
Sources close to the Patriots said the breakaway PPP faction would not like to see Mr Jamali departing or the MMA adding to the voting strength of the ruling alliance inside parliament after the government-MMA reach an agreement on the LFO.