LAHORE/ISLAMABAD Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif has advised Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani to call an all-parties conference, including the army and judiciary, to devise solutions to the country’s problems. The prime minister, however, told reporters in Islamabad that he would respond to Shahbaz Sharif’s proposal after going through the details. Shahbaz told reporters after the inauguration of a three-day anti-polio campaign at his residence in Lahore that two days ago he had spoken to the prime minister on the phone, on the advice of Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) chief Nawaz Sharif, to seek a way to steer the country out of the crises.
He said the contact with Gilani was meant to cool down political tensions in the country, especially those between the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) and the PML-N and to refocus on the people’s issues. He said he was ready to meet the PM if invited. He said that the need of the hour was for “all the stakeholders, including the political leadership, army and judiciary [to] discuss the challenges faced by the country”. “The prime minister can call us or we can arrange a meeting in Lahore to develop complete consensus on finding ways to improve the deteriorating situation in the country,” the CM said.
He said that because of the deteriorating conditions in the country, there should be no point-scoring on the political front. He said gas outages were discussed in his phone call to the PM and that he had stressed it should be ended as soon as possible and hopefully the problem would be solved soon. PM TO RESPOND: To Shahbaz Sharif’s proposals, Prime Minister Gilani said, “Let the details come then I will respond to this proposal … I will also convene a meeting of the leaders of all parliamentary parties for discussion on national issues.”
Talking to reporters addressing a Seerat conference, Gilani said that whether or not the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) would join the cabinet should be directed to the party itself, but added that the MQM was one of the allies of the government. He said the government could not fight a war with the United States on the issue of drone strikes. “We are against drone strikes … we are using all diplomatic channels to convince the US that these strikes are proving counter-productive. However, we cannot have a war with the US on this issue,” he said.
The premier assured the nation that the government would not take any decision on the issue of Raymond Davis against national interests. He declined to comment on the Supreme Court’s orders to terminate the contract of the Federal Investigation Agency’s director general because the matter was still in court. Gilani said if investigations proved that Interior Minister Rehman Malik had failed to provide adequate security to slain minorities affairs minister Shahbaz Bhatti, action would be taken against him.
