The federal and provincial ministers belonging to Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM) will stay away from offices on Monday, the fourth consecutive day, as a row over resignations between the government and their party still to be settled. The MQM leadership has so far not finalised the names of its members who will meet President General Pervez Musharraf in a high-level meeting to be held on Tuesday.
Somehow, MQM London-based chief Altaf Hussain said on Saturday that crisis created by resignations submitted by his party ministers from the federal and provincial assemblies have been amicably resolved.
"We have so far decided that our ministers will stay away till all issues are resolved," a senior MQM leader told Business Recorder on Sunday.
Three MQM federal ministers - Shamim Siddiqui (communications), Babar Ghauri (ports and shipping), Syed Safwanullah (housing and Work) and one State Minister Dr Amir Liaquat Hussain (religious affairs) - have not attended offices till Thursday.
The decision to pull out members from federal ministries have badly affected the working in these four important ministries.
They have returned back the privileges they were getting while holding ministership portfolios in the federal government.
"At the moment they are in Karachi and there is no possibility that they will come Islamabad on Monday," the party leader said.
President Musharraf has already called a meeting on Tuesday to settle the stand-off between Muttahida and Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim.
When asked, a Muttahida worker, who insisted not to be named, said that MQM leadership has not yet formed any committee that will meet President Musharraf in his camp office at Rawalpindi.
It is learnt that MQM parliamentary leader in the National Assembly, Dr Farooq Sattar, will lead the delegation. "The committee has not been named so far but I believe it would surely be headed by Farooq Sattar," he responded.
It is also learnt that MQM leaders, top guns of ruling PML, Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim, and President's top aides are likely to attend the meeting.
"One thing should be clear that we are not demanding removal of the Sindh chief minister. We are just saying that public should not suffer from our differences. More than 7,000 summaries are still pending... We have to provide 40,000 jobs," the leader added.
However, he went on saying that there was no possibility to quitting national and provincial assemblies at the moment even if they failed to make any headway in high-level meeting. "We will take such extreme step only if we were victimised," he clarified.
In the meantime, MQM central leadership held a meeting in Karachi on Sunday night to take stock of the situation and finalise the formation of committee to meet President Musharraf.
Till filing of the report, the meeting was under way and names were being finalised with the consultation of London-based leadership.
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