‘Musharraf to head United Muslim League’

Karachi
All factions of the Pakistan Muslim League have finally agreed to unite and launch a new political party to be called the Muttahida Muslim League (MML) before the local bodies elections, sources privy to the development said on Friday.
After a number of meetings, former president Gen (retd) Pervez Musharraf emerged as the consensus chairman of the new party to be announced in September, the insiders told The News.
The next meeting of all the Muslim Leaguers will be held in Islamabad, and although Musharraf will not attend the meeting but he will be taken on board via video link.
Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, head of the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, who arrived in the city on Friday morning in a bid to unite all PML factions, held a series of meetings and said he had embarked upon a process of giving priority to national interests over personal interests.
His first meeting was with the chief of the Pakistan Muslim League- Functional, Pir Sibghatullah Shah Rashdi, at his residence, and they discussed the pros and cons of the new alliance in detail.
The sources however said Rashdi showed reluctance over the merger of the factions into one, suggesting that initially a grand opposition alliance should be formed at the Sindh level against the Pakistan People’s Party and at a later stage that alliance be converted into a bigger one at the federal level.
The sources quoted Pagara, whose party is a coalition partner in the centre, as saying: “Let this alliance work out in Sindh, and if it achieves its desired results, my party will surely quit the alliance with the PML-N.”
This was not the first time that all factions of the Muslim League expressed their intent to join hands and work from one platform. In the past too, several meetings between the heads of all the three factions were organised but remained inconclusive.
Hussain, the sources said, requested Pagara to take the initiative to unite all PML factions.
He described the meeting of great benefit and declared: ‘We are committed to working towards building a country where there is development and peace and we are also striving to achieve such a political climate which is conducive to further stability of the democratic process.”
In reply to a question about the meeting between Pagara and Hussain, Haleem Adil Sheikh, president of the PML-Q’s Karachi chapter, said: “We are one and the same working for the progress of the country.”
After his arrival at the airport, Hussain told journalists that he had come to the port city to reinvigorate the party’s allies.
Replying to queries, he admitted that he was still friends with the former president Asif Ali Zardari.
To another question, the PML-Q president said the Muttahida Qaumi Movement would soon return to the parliament.
He denied that the Karachi operation was being targeted against one political party, and said it should be conducted against all corrupt elements across the country.
From the airport, Hussain drove to the residence of former Sindh home minister Dr Zulfiqar Mirza to condole the death of his father.
After calling on Mirza, he met Pagara and the two discussed ways and means to form a grand political alliance. Both supported the Rangers-led operation in the city, and said corrupt and criminal elements should be eliminated.
Pagara said: “We have ironed out differences by holding talks inviting all likeminded elements to join the new party.”
Hussain said there was no harm in the merger of Muslim League factions and that only a “united party can help rescue the nation from the precipice”.
He further said: “We want a leadership which is acceptable to all. Political analysts are attaching much importance to the meetings of the heads of three factions in the current fast-changing political scenario with both the Pakistan People’s Party and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement apparently having been pushed to the wall.”
“It is not a unification but assimilation of the Muslim Leagues,” Pagara said while talking to the media after the meeting.
Hussain said Pakistan was passing through a critical phase, and “we must shun our petty differences and think about saving the country from danger to its solidarity”.
Hussain then met disgruntled PML- N leader and former chief minister Syed Ghous Ali Shah, who thought the PML was almost dead in Sindh due to the bad performance of Nawaz Sharif there and there was a dire need for a new political force to save the country.
Ghous said he was in contact with all major disgruntled party leaders who were willing to join the MML and in this connection he referred to some big names in the party, including Hamid Nasir Chattha and Zulfiqar Khosa, as well as to disgruntled PPP leaders Safdar Abbasi and Naheed Khan.
At the last leg of his tour of the city, the PML-Q chief met Musharraf and informed him about the details of the two meetings with regard to the new alliance.