ISLAMABAD, Jan 17: The government seems to be non-committal on repealing the 17th Amendment as President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani discussed with their aides a strategy to overcome pressure for doing away with the amendment, sources told Dawn on Saturday.

Mr Gilani called on Mr Zardari at the presidency and discussed the prevailing situation with special reference to the coming Senate elections and pressure for repealing the 17th Amendment.

A handout issued by the President House, if read between the lines, suggests that the government is non-committal in repealing the amendment and would use delaying tactics to wriggle out of the quandary.

It said: “The president and the prime minister agreed that the PPP would consider and support ‘any consensus’ bill on constitutional amendments that ‘may be’ brought before parliament.”

The handout shows the government is not hopeful that there will be consensus on a single draft and there is no certainty whether the bill will be tabled in the National Assembly or not.

A delegation of Rawalpindi PPP called on the president on Saturday.

The president told the meeting that the government was determined to steer the country out of social, political and economic problems.

“We will take the country to new heights in the days to come,” he said.

“Our opponents have unleashed a malicious propaganda on the eve of Senate elections, but we will defeat all conspiracies hatched against the democratic government,” Mr Zardari said.

Meanwhile, President’s spokesman Farhatullah Babar said Mr Zardari was committed to the supremacy of parliament.

“The president has made it very clear on a number of occasions, before and after taking over as president, both informally and formally, in interviews and on the floor of the house that he wants parliament to be supreme.”

Mr Zardari, he said, was ready to surrender powers to dismiss an elected government and to appoint services’ chiefs, chief justice and chief election commissioner.

He said had the president been cool to ceding his power, he would not have addressed the joint sitting, in which he asked legislators to revisit the 17th Amendment and Article 58-2(b).