ISLAMABAD April 8: President Pervez Musharraf told his allies from the Pakistan People’s Party Parliamentarians (Patriots) on Tuesday that his political roadmap must be carried on and criticised challenges to his powers, informed sources said.

The president held talks with a 17-member delegation led by PPPP (Patriots) group chief and Defence Minister Rao Sikandar Iqbal in the second meeting with political groups in as many days to discuss important national and international issues.

The sources quoted President Musharraf as saying that the political roadmap given by him for the revival of democracy must be continued as a vehicle of stability and in the larger interest of the people and the country.

He criticised opposition parties for challenging his Legal Framework Order (LFO), which give him sweeping powers, after contesting last October’s elections under the same framework and accepting most of its provisions, the sources said.

President Musharraf’s meetings with parliament members follow severe criticism of the LFO by opposition parties in the previous sessions of the 342-seat National Assembly and the 100-seat Senate where the ruling coalition led by Pakistan Muslim League-Q could put up only a feeble defence of the presidential powers.

The opposition parties have vowed to continue their protests against the LFO, which empowers President Musharraf to continue as president and the Army Chief for five more years, dissolve parliament, sack prime minister and appoint armed forces chief and provincial governors.

The sources said the president’s recourse to direct meetings with parliament members from both the treasury and opposition benches instead of depending solely on the ruling coalition was a clear message to his adversaries that he would continue to call the shots and was not prepared to step down as chief of the army staff or surrender other powers assumed through the LFO.

The sources quoted the president as saying in Tuesday’s meeting that the credit of giving the country economic stability and raising its status as a moderate, tolerant and responsible state went to three years of his rule after seizing power in the October 1999 coup.

Other prominent members of the delegation of PPPP (Patriots) — a group of defectors from the opposition PPP and now a components of Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali’s government — included Interior Minister Faisal Saleh Hayat, ministers of state Raza Hayat Harraj, Khalid Lund and Raees Munir Ahmed, MNAs Dr Sher Afgan Niazi and Syed Tanveer Hussain.

The group’s Petroleum and Natural Resources Minister Chaudhry Naurez Shakoor was not in the delegation because of being of out of the country.

Earlier on Tuesday, the president, who received a large PML-Q delegation on Monday, separately consulted Prime Minister Jamali and party president Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain.

Both the prime minister and PML-Q chief briefed the president about their talks with opposition parties, specially the Muttahida Majlis-i-Amal (MMA) on the contentious clauses of the LFO and related matters, party sources said.

A close aide to Chaudhry Shujaat told Dawn that the party chief had taken a briefing from a party thinktank before going for a separate meeting with President Musharraf to seek his advice on taking a line in future talks with the opposition.

An official statement said that in his meeting with the PPPP (Patriots) delegation, the president consulted them on matters of national and international interests with special reference to the regional situation following the US-British attack on Iraq.

President Musharraf said that as a strong Islamic country, Pakistan had a key standing among the Muslim Ummah and could contribute significantly if it was economically strong and stable.

After apprising the members of delegation about the three years’ success story the president said, it was now the duty of elected representatives to take this process forward for the benefit of the common man.

He said the macro-economic situation was satisfactory as foreign exchange reserves and revenue collections were going up and fiscal deficit was under control.

The president said the policies followed in the past three years had ensured Pakistan’s security, safeguarded its strategic interests and resulted in an economic turnaround of the country.

About economic situation the president said that debt servicing, which used to be 61 per cent of the budget, had been brought down to 46 per cent of the budget, providing 15 per cent additional fiscal space which ought to be utilised for the welfare of the people.

The debt servicing, he said, was to be brought down to 30 per cent of the budget to spare around 70 per cent remaining funds for development in the next five years, he said.

The PPPP (Patriots) MNAs said on the occasion that they believed in the stability of the system and described the policies adopted during the last three years as excellent for the country.

They expressed support for the continuation of these initiatives as they felt that these were in the best interests of the country.