ISLAMABAD, Nov 9: The government is trying to broker a coalition involving its major opposition party in a deal that could break a month-long impasse over the formation of a new government, political sources said here on Saturday.

More than four weeks after polls political parties were still negotiating in a bid to form a majority coalition.

Sources said the regime had called for an alliance between the pro-government PML-Q and the party of former premier Benazir Bhutto, the PPP.

Although the government has kept silent, official sources say an offer has been extended to the PPP leadership under which Benazir’s jailed husband, Asif Ali Zardari, would be freed in return for agreeing to a coalition.

According to a PPP legislator, many of the party’s 81 members elected to the National Assembly are in favour of abandoning pre-election acri-

mony and uniting with the PML-Q, which won 103 seats in the polls.

“A sizable number of the PPP’s MNAs want to be in the government,” PPP legislator-elect Faisal Saleh Hayat told AFP.

“There is no harm in sitting in the government. I have warned Benazir Bhutto that if we do not follow this line, there will be division in the party.”

Asif, in an interview with AFP on Friday, acknowledged there were ongoing negotiations between the PPP and Musharraf’s regime, but denied his release from jail — where he has been held since 1996 on corruption and criminal charges — was being used as a bargaining chip.

“I will have nowhere to go if I strike any clandestine deal with the powers-that-be and I don’t want to put myself in a situation where whatever I have sacrificed in the past six years goes to waste,” he said.

Privately officials from both sides have said a deal was in the offing, and Asif confirmed that the PPP parliamentary leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim was discussing a power-sharing arrangement with the government.

“There is definitely a dialogue between Fahim and powers-that-be but no deal. The word deal is coined by establishment to undermine politicians,” he said.—AFP