ISLAMABAD, Sept 24: A three-member Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal team led by its president Allama Shah Ahmed Noorani met Prime Minister MIr Zafarullah Jamali on Wednesday and handed over to him draft constitutional proposals prepared by it in response to the government-prepared constitutional package it received last week.

The unsigned three-point counter proposals were finalized in a meeting of the heads of MMA component parties on Tuesday.

While receiving the single-page draft, the prime minister expressed his desire to resolve all constitutional issues with mutual understanding.

In the hour-long meeting, the prime minister who was accompanied by Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, requested the MMA to allow the government some time to consider its proposals after consulting President Gen Pervez Musharraf on his return from abroad.

The MMA team which included deputy secretary-general Liaquat Baloch and deputy parliamentary leader Hafiz Hussain Ahmed, however, asked the government to finalize the draft amendments package without any further delay and table it before parliament, otherwise the MMA would be forced to launch a mass-contact campaign.

The first point in the MMA’s proposals seeks a clear mention of the cut-off date for separation of the president’s office from that of the COAS which has been shown as settled in the official draft although it was agreed in the Lahore talks that the president would give up his uniform by Dec 31, 2004.

The second point in the counter proposals states that the extension in the upper age-limit of the Supreme Court and high courts judges be limited to one year against the three years proposed in the LFO.

The third point relates to a timetable for withdrawal of the police order 2002, and the local governments order from the sixth Schedule.

Briefing newsmen after the MMA’s meeting with the prime minister, Liaquat Baloch and Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said the alliance had sought clarifications on the points which had already been agreed between the two sides and no new point had been raised.

Mr Baloch said the draft package delivered by the government was in clear deviation from what had already been agreed and amounted to backing out from the points agreed in the Lahore talks. He said the MMA had asked the government to clearly state its position on contentious issues instead of offering vague answers.

He said the MMA had impressed upon the prime minister that the government should bring its amendments package to parliament where the opposition would also table its own amendments and with mutual consultation on these drafts a middle way could be found.

The MMA leader said the alliance had told the prime minister that the real issue was separation of the president’s office from that of the chief of army staff and claimed that on this score maximum flexibility had been shown by the alliance.

He maintained that it was Senator S.M. Zafar who proposed that Article 63(1)d of the Constitution should be made operative after December 31, 2004, to finally separate the two offices.

In reply to a question, he said the MMA team’s meeting with the prime minister did not amount to resumption of the dialogue process, rather it was just a move to seek clarifications from the government on the proposals that were prepared by the S.M. Zafar committee and what was approved by the cabinet and delivered to the MMA.

Responding to a question about the recent statement of Gen Musharraf that he would not shed his uniform, Hafiz Hussain Ahmed said the government which had been continuously telling us that the LFO was part of the Constitution had agreed to bring a constitutional package to parliament meaning that it had accepted the disputed nature of the LFO.

The government, he said, also accepted the principle that all amendments ought to be made through parliament and in accordance with the constitutional procedure.

The most respectable way for Gen Musharraf to give up his uniform was to publicly announce a cut-off date for his retirement from the army instead of trying to create hurdles in the way of smooth transfer of power from the army to the elected parliament.

Any constitutional package which did not mention in clear terms a cut-off date for the separation of the president’s office from that of COAS would not be acceptable to the MMA or other opposition parties, he stated.