Islamabad, Nov 20 (ANI): Close friends of President Asif Ali Zardari living in the United Arab Emirates 9UAE) have reportedly approached former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi in an effort to get him to rejoin the Pakistan Peoples Party, or at least to persuade him not to ally with the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz.
Sources aware of the development said that the mediators met with Qureshi on November 18 to discuss the matter.
"He did not categorically refuse to reconcile with the president," the Express Tribune quoted a source, as saying.
Sources also said that the presidency had conveyed to Qureshi that his resignation from the party had not yet been accepted. Qureshi announced on November 14 that he was resigning from the party (in his words, "the Zardari League") as well as his seat in the National Assembly.
Qureshi, who is due to return to Pakistan on November 21 and meet PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif the next day, told the president's emissaries that he would make his final decision after meeting Sharif.
Sources said the PPP would not accept Qureshi's resignation before then. They added that the party had done a rough survey in the former foreign minister's constituency, NA-148, and found that he would easily win a by-election there.
The president is "very worried" about the possibility of Qureshi joining the PML-N, said a PPP source, as this would hurt the PPP vote-bank in upper Sindh and southern Punjab. He confirmed the president was seeking to bring Qureshi back into the PPP, but it was premature to say whether this would happen.
PPP MPA Dr Akhtar Malik, a close ally of Qureshi whose PP-202 constituency falls within the boundaries of NA-148, said that there had been contact between the two sides, but refused to elaborate. He said Qureshi's meeting with Nawaz would "clear 60 percent of the smoke" around his future. (ANI)
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