ISLAMABAD/LAHORE, Sept 18: President Gen Pervez Musharraf and Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Khan Jamali held a meeting on Thursday to firm up the government’s stance on the Legal Framework Order.
An official announcement said the prime minister and the president “exchanged views on the political situation in the country.”
Meanwhile, talking to newsmen in Kasur, Prime Minister Jamali expressed the optimism that the dialogue with the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal would yield positive results.
The prime minister had asked the MMA on Tuesday to give him two days, when he would respond to their demand that the President Musharraf leave the office of the Chief of the Army Staff.
As the government-MMA talks on the LFO entered the final phase, sources privy to the parleys said the president was willing to divest the military uniform by the end of 2004 but would not to put it down in writing.
They said the president would also not like the MMA leadership to make his uniform an issue of public debate though he would indicate to three top leaders of the alliance when he would leave his army office.
The same sources said that it had also been agreed between the government and the MMA that the president would take a vote of confidence from parliament as well as the provincial assemblies, but his election to the office through a referendum last year would be accepted as valid.
One of the sources said all procedures adopted for the passage of the Eighth Amendment in 1985 when the then president Gen Mohammad Ziaul Haq was in power would be followed for validating the LFO.
In the meantime, talking to newsmen in the office of the Kasur district Nazim and later at Lahore airport, he said that the talks with the MMA were at a “very advanced stage and we have gone too far in this context” and added that the government was determined to make the process fruitful.
A consensus had been developed on most of the points of the constitutional package even during the party heads’ meeting two days ago, he said, adding he had sought two-to-three days time from the MMA to clear the remaining ambiguities, though of secondary nature.
When asked about MMA leaders’ statement regarding the end of the dialogue, Mr Jamali said that he would meet the MMA leaders himself even if they don’t want to hold parleys with the government.
Expressing his happiness over the unification of five factions of PML, the rime minister said that he had been working for the unification since 1993. “Thank God, all the (PML) groups have ultimately got together,” he said.
Asked about the inclusion of PML-Nawaz in the unification fold, he said he himself went to them earlier but they didn’t demonstrate a positive attitude.
He categorically rebutted the reports that a contingent of Pakistan Army is waiting in the wings to leave for Iraq. There is nothing on ground in this regard, he said.