Presidency announces concessions

Pakistan Peoples Party believes in reconciliation and dialogue, and due to it federal government has decided to file a review petition in Supreme Court against disqualification of Sharif brothers. President Asif Ali Zardari stated this while addressing party legislators at presidency on Saturday.
He said that the present tirade against him is not new as his opponents had been doing this in the past as well to drive a wedge between the workers and the party leadership. Zaradri said that in 70s our opponents had said that PPP was acceptable but without Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
He went on saying that then these opponents said that they had no quarrel with the party, provided the workers got rid of the leadership of Shaheed Mohtarma Benazir Bhutto, who was dubbed by them as security risk. "The same refrain still continues and I am the target of the opponents", he added.
He asked the party legislators to beware of the conspiracy against PPP and to educate people about the machinations of the opponents to discredit the party. The meeting also adopted a unanimous resolution reposing complete trust in the leadership of co-chairman and President Asif Ali Zardari.
AFP ADDS: President Asif Ali Zardari late on Saturday offered key concessions to Nawaz Sharif in a bid to defuse the political crisis. The decisions were taken in a meeting between Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani and the President, presidency sources said in a statement released after officials said US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton had telephoned the rival leaders.
But PML-N said it would wait for action, not words. Opposition party workers and lawyers are gearing up to march on Islamabad by Monday to demand that Zardari should act on promises to reinstate the sacked judges. The presidency announced that Zardari and Gilani agreed that the "issue of judiciary and restoration of judges would be resolved in accordance with the principles laid down in the charter of democracy".
"The federal government will file a review petition in the Supreme Court against the verdict of the Supreme Court, disqualifying Mian Nawaz Sharif and Mian Shahbaz Sharif from electoral politics," the statement said. The statement was released shortly after local officials announced that Hillary had called Zardari and Sharif, as efforts mounted to find a solution to resolve the crisis.
Ahsan Iqbal, spokesman for Nawaz, said he would wait to see how the announcement on the restoration of judges would play out, but welcomed the appeal to the Supreme Court. "We will see how these things happen. How judges will be restored... It is not yet clear," Iqbal told AFP.