PML-N meeting concludes; majority want end to alliance with PPP

Pakistan Muslim League - Nawaz chief Nawaz Sharif. — File Photo ISLAMABAD: A majority of members of the Pakistan Muslim League – Nawaz (PML-N) who attended the party's meeting on Friday recommended that the alliance with the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in Punjab should be broken. The meeting was presided by party chief Nawaz Sharif in Islamabad. The meeting was attended by members from the party’s provincial councils and party council members from Azad Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan. At the end of the meeting, Nawaz Sharif said the PML-N believed in developing consensus and making decisions on those grounds. Friday's meeting came after detailed talks on Thursday between Punjab Chief Minister Shahbaz Sharif and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani. Thursday's meeting was held as media reports intensified, predicting that the PML-N will, in its meeting on Friday, decide to expel the PPP from the coalition government in the Punjab as the first step in an anti-government campaign. The two-hour deliberations, according to insiders, were focussed on the PML-N's 10-point reforms agenda, the delayed accountability bill, on which the two parties do not see eye to eye and NRO-related issues.