Wednesday, May 22, 2002
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By B. Muralidhar Reddy
On Monday, it was announced that Gen. Musharraf would consult a cross-section of people, particularly political leaders, to take the nation into confidence about the situation arising out of `unprovoked Indian shelling along the Line of Control and the Working Boundary'. The Information Secretary to the former Prime Minister, Benazir Bhutto, and Pakistan People's Party leader, Farhatullah Babar, told The Hindu that ``to the best of my knowledge none of the leaders of the mainstream political and religious leaders have responded positively to the invitation for the consultation process''. Mr. Babar said that in the first instance, the Musharraf Government had not convened an all-party meeting to discuss the tension on the borders. The Government had invited the leaders of various parties individually. ``One of our senior leaders did get a telephone call from the secretariat of Gen. Musharraf and our standard reply was that it should be routed through our chairperson, Benazir Bhutto. The person in Musharraf's secretariat at the other end simply banged the phone,'' he said. According to the PPP leader, the Alliance for the Restoration of Democracy (ARD) president, Nawabzada Nasrullah Khan, was invited in his capacity as chief of the ARD. The Alliance consists of some 15 parties, including two main political parties — Pakistan Muslim League led by the former Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif, and PPP. Mr. Babar said that after consultations with all the constituents of the ARD, including Mr. Sharif and the PPP, the ARD chief conveyed to the managers of the Musharraf Government his inability to attend the meet. ``The Musharraf Government has imposed a ban on the activities of political parties for the last two years. The decision of the Government to call us for consultations is meaningless as we are in no position to motivate and educate the people. The just-concluded All-Party Conference in Lahore on Sunday had urged the Musharraf Government to lift the ban, hand over governance to an interim set-up to meet the challenges faced by the country from within and without. Unless Gen. Musharraf is willing to consider these demands, what is the point of consultations,'' asked Mr. Babar. It appears the alliance of religious parties led by the Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) chief, Quazi Hussain Ahmed, has also replied in the negative to the invitation for consultations from Gen. Musharraf. In a related development, the Chairman of the National Kashmir Committee and former president and Prime Minister of Pak-occupied Kashmir (PoK), Sardar Abdul Qayum Khan, said that Gen. Musharraf should convene a meeting of all political parties to reach a national consensus on the volatile situation with India. At a news conference here, he said that India was likely to attack vulnerable places in PoK and capture them in the garb of wiping out the ``so-called Jehadi camps''. If a war broke out between India and Pakistan, it would not remain ``limited'' unless foreign powers intervened.
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