ISLAMABAD, Oct 23: The Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) has welcomed US Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage’s statement regarding democracy in the country.

In a statement issued on Tuesday, a spokesman for the party said Mr Armitage reiterated his government’s stance that it had not changed its mind about the need for democracy in Islamabad.

He said the US official made it clear in an interview that despite the current situation where Pakistan was being dubbed as a close US ally, Washington’s stress on democracy was not diluted.

The spokesman said there was no progress on the implementation of phase two of the so called ‘road map to democracy’ which envisaged work on the delimitation of constituencies, provision of national identity cards to the voters and updating the voters list. This act of the military regime had raised doubts whether the agenda of restoration of democracy was on the back burner, he added.

He contended that integrity of the federation and internal security could be at risk if the regime abandoned or delayed the process of restoration of democracy on the pretext of the situation in the region.

He said elections should be held on time so that the people could have a voice in the framing of the government policies.