Zardari not keen on meeting Altaf Hussain

LONDON: The meeting between President Asif Ali Zardari and the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) leader Altaf Hussain was still not on the cards until Wednesday and no date or time was being scheduled.
To sound politically correct both sides sounded willing to meet but it looked as if the spark and enthusiasm for a meeting was lacking on President Asif Ali Zardari’s side. Sources told The News that President Zardari was set to fly out to Pakistan on Thursday and until the filing of this report on Wednesday afternoon no meeting with the MQM was planned.
“The President will fly to Dubai on the 15th by a commercial flight from where he will take his private plane to Pakistan. His doctors have given him clearance for travel,” a source said.
“The chance of a meeting is little, especially in view of the havoc caused by floods in Sindh. The president does not want to be seen holding public and political meetings when his hometown has gone under water. It could be suicidal, politically,” said a senior PPP source who has been hovering around the President’s Churchill Hotel in central London.
Senior analyst Najam Sethi told The News that Awami National Party (ANP) is taking a tough line and the president doesn’t want to lose the ANP support. “ANP is threatening to pull out and the president is trying to accommodate them by sending a signal that he is on their side. He is acutely aware of the seriousness of the matter,” Sethi said.
Resting in his Churchill Hotel suite since Friday, from where he went to the Royal Brompton Hospital on Sunday, the president has been receiving close family friends and key aides although he had been advised by the doctors to rest as much as he could.
The last time the two leaders met in London, the MQM chief had travelled with his Rabita Committee members to President Zardari’s hotel in London and they could have repeated the same pattern this time around too and the visit would have carried huge political symbolism, especially after the storm unleashed by Dr Zulfikar Mirza against the MQM and the president’s own judgment.
MQM’s media spokesperson Mustafa Azizabadi told The News: “Rabita Committee members visited the hospital and conveyed the best wishes of Altaf Hussain to President Zardari but a meeting has not yet been scheduled.”
Also on Sunday, a delegation of the MQM comprising Rabita Committee members Saleem Shahzad and Raza Haroon visited the president with a bouquet on behalf of the party chief. President Asif Ali Zardari arrived in London on Friday and got the “clean bill of health” after his clear angiography on Sunday and was shifted back to the hotel where his daughters Asifa and Bakhtawar, Pakistan’s High Commissioner to the UK Wajid Shamsul Hasan, Dr Asim Hussain, the presidential security staff and his key aides have been by his side.
In what could be a big irritant and could lead to the MQM becoming further aggrieved, a Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) member Sindh Council and the main ally of Dr Zulfikar Mirza in London Habib Jan Baloch is planning a protest outside the MQM headquarters over the weekend.
The central leader of Friends of Lyari International will join hands with some workers of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf (PTI) against the MQM leadership. It will be seen whether a great deal of Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) activists, in defiance of the party line of reconciliation, attend the protest and whether the party has given a secret nod to their key overseas branch to campaign against their political ally in Pakistan.
A spokesman at the Pakistan High Commission said that it was unable to comment on President Asif Ali Zardari’s “private visit” and did not have a clue on the schedule of the president.