Returning to the fold: Fazl keeps politicos guessing

Plan for three-nation visit signifies he has not shut the door on a possible return.


Qaiser Butt December 20, 2010

ISLAMABAD: JUI-F chief and former ally of the PP government, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, has postponed his planned foreign trips, but has not cancelled them. Fazl, who is also chairman of the Kashmir Committee will now leave next month on a diplomatic mission to lobby the Kashmir cause, reliable sources told The Express Tribune on Sunday, indicating that he is still keeping his options open for a possible rapprochement with the federal government.

Fazl, who parted ways with the PPP-led coalition government last week, was scheduled to leave on a two- week tour of Saudi Arabia, Morocco and Libya this month but decided to postpone the visits due to the political flutter caused by the ouster of his party’s minister from the federal cabinet.

There are other indications signifying that the Maulana could possibly return to the fold of the ruling coalition. He told Interior Minister Rehman Malik on Sunday that the issue of rejoining the government would be deliberated at the Central Committee of the JUI on December 22.

The estranged leader after withdrawing from the government had also announced to sit on the opposition benches in Parliament.

But he has retained his post as Kashmir Committee chief and has informed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs about the postponement of his scheduled tour of three countries following his disassociation from the ruling coalition but made it clear that he had no intention to cancel the tour. “I will travel to all the three countries  in January,” he informed the Foreign Office.

Malik during the meeting on Sunday asked the Maulana to re-consider his decision but the JUI-F chief refused to budge, media reports said.

However, he assured Malik by saying that he would put before his party’s central committee, during its meeting on December 22, all the discussions he had on the subject with the president and other ministers of the cabinet including those he had with the interior minister, the report further said.

Sources in the Foreign Office said that the Kashmir committee chairman had visited about 25 countries during 2010 and about the same number in the previous year to plead Pakistan’s Kashmir case.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 20th, 2010.

COMMENTS (1)

Maken | 13 years ago | Reply It is main pillar of JUI-F politics of being tricky
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