The Pakistan People's Party (PPP) has not yet been able to develop a consensus on front-runner Makhdoom Amin Fahim as Prime Minister and some new names are under consideration, party sources here said.

PPP information secretary Sherry Rehman confirmed reports and said it is not necessary that the Prime Minister should be from Sindh.

"The PPP is a federal party with support in all four provinces," she told private TV channel Geo on Friday. She hoped that the matter may be decided within the next few days.

With prospects of Fahim gradually fading, some new names have cropped up including Makhdoom Shah Mehmud Qureshi and Yousaf Raza Gilani. The latest name to surface is that of Ahmed Mukhtar, a former federal minister and one time secretary general of the party who defeated PML-Q chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain from Gujrat.

Mukhtar confirmed that his name is also under discussion but believed that final decision would not be taken till the day the Parliament meets and election for the leader of the House takes place.

Fahim has been in the forefront as a prime ministerial candidate. He confirmed this to The News on Friday but hastened to add that the crucial decision would be announced soon.

He has staked his claim for being loyal to the party and having refused the offer to become premier in 2002 when Musharraf wanted him to distance himself from Benazir Bhutto which he had declined.

Though a weak leader, Fahim commands respect among most political leaders in the country and has stayed loyal ever since the party was founded in 1967. Analysts say the death of Benazir Bhutto and the prevailing sentiments in Sindh makes it a compulsion that the next premier should be from Sindh.

Asif Zardari is keeping his choice close to his chest. He is preoccupied with cobbling together a government of national consensus before the National Assembly session is convened. Fahim has assisted him in negotiations with all political leaders.

Party sources say there is pressure on Zardari to become Prime Minister. But he will have to contest an election which he intends to do in the by-election to the Larkana seat. By that time, there may be a stop-gap arrangement, sources said.

Ahmed Mukhtar, while answering questions, said he was not sure whether his name was being discussed for the interim period.

Unlike Mukhtar and Fahim, other probable candidates like Qureshi and Gillani are latecomers to the party. Their feudal background is also being cited as a minus point against them. Ahmed Mukhtar is an industrialist and runs the famous Service Shoe Company.

The National Assembly will meet on March 5 and the new prime minister will take oath between March 12 and 15, two federal ministers, Afzal Haider and Nisar Memon, have said in separate statements.

But the election commission says the assembly session may be delayed till at least March 8 before constitutional formalities are completed.

Under the constitution, the notification of elected members must be made within 14 days after the elections which falls on March 3. The commission has stretched its work till the last date. The commission is still busy in repelling in several constituencies while superior courts have granted a spate of stay orders against official notification of results in constituencies where defeated candidates have alleged irregularities.

Commission secretary Kunwar Dilshad said if the notification is issued on March 3, three more days would be needed for independent candidates to declare their intent to join any political party they wished. The next day, the commission will allocate seats reserved for women and minorities to the parties proportionate to the strength and on the basis of priority list they provided in December.

"So the earliest the assembly session can be convened would be March 8,' Dilshad said. The newly elected members would be administered oath on the first day while on the second day the speaker and deputy speaker would be elected.

Talking to a private TV channel, information minister Nisar said the newly elected legislators would take oath on March 5 and elections for the posts of speaker and deputy speaker of the National Assembly would be held on March 6 or 7 through secret balloting. The prime minister may be elected between March 12 and 15, he added.

London, March 1
A “frustrated” Prince Harry today returned from Afghanistan after a news leak prematurely ended his secretive stint on the frontline but the maverick British royal said he was raring to go to the war zone again.

The 23-year-old prince, who has earned fullsome praise from many, including his grandmother Queen Elizabeth II for spending 10 weeks along British troops fighting the Taliban, was greeted by his father Prince Charles and elder brother Prince William after he landed at the military airbase in Oxfordshire with 170 other troops.

“I don’t want to sit around Windsor, because I generally don’t like England that much and it’s nice to be away from all the press and the papers,” Harry, third in line to the throne, said before returning from the Helmand province in Afghanistan.

The second Lieutenant in the Household Cavalry also said he would relish another front-line posting.