ISLAMABAD, April 8: At a time when the political climate is heating up at home, some leading figures of the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), including co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari, have chosen to go abroad, making observers wonder if issues of national politics are again being decided in far-off lands.

Mr Zardari went to Dubai with Adviser to the Prime Minister on Interior Affairs Rehman Malik on April 5 and later he called Law Minister Farooq Naek for ‘important consultations’.

Initially it was said that Mr Zardari had gone to Dubai for a couple of days to meet his children.

However, his decision to extend his stay in the UAE strengthened the impression that his visit was linked to the government’s recent move to withdraw cases pending against him in a Swiss court.

PPP spokesman Farhatullah Babar said he had been told by Mr Zardari in Naudero that he was going to Dubai to see his children and would be back in two to three days. He said the co-chairman was expected to return to the country on Wednesday.

The importance of matters under discussion in Dubai is evident from the fact that Mr Malik, who had arrived in Islamabad on Tuesday morning to meet UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, was flying back to Dubai. Sources said he was at Islamabad airport when he was asked by Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani not to go to Dubai and, instead, address a press conference on the incident in which former minister Sher Afgan Niazi was manhandled, apparently by lawyers and some other people in Lahore.

Mr Naek, who returned from Dubai on Tuesday evening, confirmed that he had been called by Mr Zardari for ‘consultations’. However, he did not respond when asked why had he been called to Dubai when Mr Zardari was planning to return to the country on Wednesday. “You should ask this question from Mr Zardari,” he said.

When asked if he had been called by Mr Zardari to discuss the Swiss cases, he simply said that they had held a ‘general discussion’.

When his attention was drawn to the fact that Attorney-General Malik Abdul Qayyum had also been out of the country for a week, he said the question should have been addressed to the AG’s office.

According to reports, Mr Qayyum is in Geneva awaiting orders from Islamabad and Dubai.

The Swiss authorities are reported to have rejected the government’s request to withdraw the cases against Mr Zardari because there is no such provision in the country’s laws.

The sources said legal aides to Mr Zardari and President Pervez Musharraf were trying to find a way out of the situation.

However, the PPP spokesman denied that the Swiss authorities had refused to entertain the government’s request.