ISLAMABAD July 27: Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz had a brief meeting with the Pakistan Muslim League leadership on Thursday to discuss fallout of Muttahida Qaumi Movement decision to withdraw its ministers from federal and Sindh cabinets.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf is expected to hold on Friday a similar meeting with the prime minister and the PML leaders to discuss ways to woo back the Muttahida in the coalition folds, sources said.

Thursday meeting was followed by the prime’s minister’s another meeting with women lawmakers of the ruling PML and coalition partners.

There was no official word about the first meeting which, according to sources, remained inconclusive following the reports that Gen Musharraf himself was tackling the issue in Karachi.

Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani said that no meeting had been held to discuss the Muttahida issue.

Talking to Dawn on telephone, he said that a high level meeting was expected to be held on Friday to discuss the situation arising out of the Muttahida ministers’ resignations.

He insisted that Thursday’s meeting related to women’s concerns and no political issue, including the Muttahida stalemate, was discussed in it.

In a lighter vain he said ‘it has been left to independent press’ and refused to confirm a news report run by a private television channel

The sources, however, said that in the informal meeting with the prime minister, the PML leadership discussed several options to deal with the Muttahida’s ‘tug of war’ with Sindh Chief Minister Dr Arbab Ghulam Rahim.

The federal government and the PML leadership have so far supported the chief minister but the emergence of an anti-Arbab forward bloc in the Sindh PML has created a dilemma for the party leadership.

Thursday’s meeting between the prime minister and the PML leadership is said to have discussed the stalemate in the light of the Muttahida’s ‘disenchantment’ with the working of the Sindh chief minister.