http://www.dawn.com/2007/08/30/top6.htm
MQM chief urges amnesty also for party workers
LONDON, Aug. 29: Tariq Aziz, secretary-general of the National Security Council (NSC), called on MQM leader Altaf Hussain at the Edgware offices of the party on Wednesday to brief him on the details of agreements being reached between government emissaries and various political parties in Pakistan as well as in London.
Mr Aziz, who had come here along with ISI DG Lt-Gen Ashfaq Kiani and the president’s Chief of Staff Lt-Gen (retd) Hamid Javed to finalise a power-sharing deal with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, informed the MQM leader that President Pervez Musharraf in line with the deal would take off his uniform just before his re-election or simultaneously, Anwer Bhai, MQM spokesman told Dawn.
Mr Aziz is also said to have told the MQM chief that the president has agreed to have the constitutional article 58(2)b which empowered him to dissolve the assemblies, removed.
Mr Anwer said that a constitutional package would be introduced in parliament to lift the two-year ban on Gen Musharraf to take part in politics after leaving his official post and also remove the ban on two-time prime minister from contesting for the job for a third time.
“All the legal and political hurdles in the way of return of both Benazir and Nawaz Sharif would also be removed,” he said.
Responding to the matter of indemnity for all the office holders in the governments which ruled between 1988 and 1999, Mr Altaf is said to have suggested that this indemnity should be extended to even the lowliest of party workers.
Mr Anwer recalled that when Mr Altaf was offered release the first time he was incarcerated in General Zia’s time he had refused to leave the jail until all the arrested MQM workers had been let out.
“Why should such an indemnity apply only to the ruling elite?” Mr Anwer asked.
Mr Altaf is also said to have objected to the agreement that the local body governments would be suspended two months before the elections.
“Altaf Bhai told Tariq Aziz that this was a totally undemocratic demand on the part of the PPP and he recalled that in the 2002 elections the PPP had no objections to the continuation of these governments, perhaps because most of these governments in rural Sindh at that time were in PPP’s hands,” said Mr Anwer.
He said the details agreed in the deals on the issue of holding free, fair and transparent elections also came under discussion.
Comment: So the deal has to be endorsed by the biggest terrorrist in history of Pakistan.
