Musharraf-Nawaz encounter on cards as meeting with Benazir speculated - The News

ISLAMABAD: As rumours of a Benazir Bhutto-General Musharraf meeting in Karachi continued to haunt the media throughout Sunday, there were credible reports that a meeting between the General and Mian Nawaz Sharif in Riyadh was also on the cards when General Musharraf would visit the Kingdom, with the Saudis playing the mediators.

Though all top aides of Benazir, including Rehman Malik, Sherry Rehman and others denied any meeting, one important media high-up of the outgoing cabinet said if any meeting was to be held, it would have been on Saturday night and not on Sunday.

The Musharraf-Benazir meeting speculation grew as the US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte pushed hard for their patch-up during his visit and even in his carefully-calculated remarks advised both not to show brinksmanship and not to resort to confrontation, something which was probably aimed more at the PPP leader than General Musharraf.

But the speculation was fuelled by the arrival of General Musharraf in Karachi after his short visit to Quetta on Sunday and the unexpected dash of Benazir Bhutto to Bilawal House in Clifton when everybody was expecting that she would be heading to Islamabad for a possible face-to-face meeting with Negroponte.

In Islamabad, a high-level official said the back-channel interactions between the interlocutors of the presidential camp and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto were very much alive and the two sides were in touch with each other off and on.

The official, however, maintained that no meeting between the president and Benazir was on the cards. The official did not rule out further contacts with the other side soon and hoped that the former prime minister, who was over-influenced by the Western media, especially the US, would act in a more realistic manner in the wake of her conversation with the US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte.

“It would certainly help her in gauging the position of the US administration. I hope Benazir Bhutto would try to come out of the hype she fell into in the last few days.” The official explained that the president was visiting the provincial capitals of Lahore, Karachi and Quetta to meet the provincial legislatures on the eve of completion of their term and thanking them for their support to him.

The Nawaz-Musharraf meeting under the supervision of the Saudis was a more plausible prospect though all PML-N leaders were positive that their leader would never agree to see the general, no matter what.

But even if the Saudi hosts of Nawaz Sharif pressed him to sit with the general, PML-N leaders were asserting on Sunday that the only thing they could talk about was how and when Musharraf would quit and whether he would restore the ousted judiciary, revive the Constitution and put Pakistan back on the democratic rails.

Sources close to Nawaz Sharif claimed on Sunday that no meeting was scheduled so far but if there would be some meeting on the insistence of Saudi authorities, the only agenda of the meeting would be to devise a strategy for Musharraf’s unconditional exit from power.

The chances that such a meeting could take place looked more possible because Nawaz Sharif himself had stated minutes before Geo TV went off the air that he had refused to see General Musharraf in Saudi Arabia twice.

It is known that General Musharraf was supposed to visit the kingdom some days ago but the visit was cancelled at the last moment. His expected visit to Riyadh or Jeddah in a couple of days is also part of the same strategy, basically being pushed by the Saudi royal family to bring them together and try to make them live and let live.

Sources in the Pakistani High Commission in London told The News on Saturday night that the Saudi authorities had pointed to the concerned Pakistani authorities towards the possibility of such a meeting reportedly on Tuesday.

These sources claimed that the meeting, if held, would be meant to reach some compromise between the two leaders with the help of the highest Saudi authorities. PML-N leaders in Pakistan insist that such a secret meeting will be a death knell for the PML-N reputation in Pakistan and that Nawaz would never agree to sit with Musharraf.

One source said the Saudi authorities delayed permission to Nawaz to leave their country because they wanted that he should first meet Musharraf on Saudi soil. The source claimed that if Nawaz agreed to sit with Musharraf for a one-on-one meeting on the insistence of his respectable hosts, he would insist that the meeting be “on-the-record” and not secret.

“Nawaz will only ask Musharraf to restore the independent judiciary, lift curbs on the media and quit immediately to save the country from further turmoil,” the source said. Sources close to Nawaz Sharif say he was under pressure for the last two months to agree to a meeting with the top general wherever and whenever he wanted. They said that Nawaz was asked to sit with Musharraf many times through different means, including three times directly from the highest Saudi royal authorities and twice through their messengers.

However, the sources claimed that Nawaz was not ready to do so only for the reason that such an act will be against the aspirations of people of Pakistan as they only want one thing now and that is to get rid of the dictatorship at any cost.

Sources in the Pakistani High Commission in London also claimed that not only Nawaz was being pressurized to sit with Musharraf to have some compromise but the Sharif family in London was also being continuously contacted by the close relatives of the General Musharraf’s top aide for such a compromise if they wanted to go to Pakistan. The sources claimed that the last such contact was made on Friday, November 16.

Ahsan Iqbal, secretary information PML-N, when approached by The News, said that according to his information there was no possibility of such a meeting in Saudi Arabia. He said that everyone knew that emergency would be lifted after a few days as the only purpose to impose it was to get rid of the independent judiciary, a major obstacle in the unconstitutional moves of the rulers.

He said the only demand of the PML-N now was the restoration of judiciary because once the independent judges were restored, all other issues would be settled automatically. The emergency will be lifted, Provisional Constitution Order (PCO) will be revoked, the media will become free and the Constitution will be restored in one stroke.

He claimed that Musharraf did not want all these things to happen which had now become the basic demand of the nation. When presidential quarters were contacted by The News, they said Musharraf-Nawaz meeting was not being planned at the initiative of the president. They said the PML-N leadership was more than willing for such a meeting.