Fauzia ousted as PPP’s Sec. Info.

ISLAMABAD: Both former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi and PPP information secretary Fauzia Wahab were not invited to a meeting of the party’s frontline leaders on Thursday.

Sources said after the meeting of the People’s Party core committee that it had been decided that Fauzia Wahab would be replaced by former information minister Qamar Zaman Kaira and Qureshi was unlikely to be considered for a cabinet post. The recent outbursts by the two over the issue of Raymond Davis, a US national accused of killing two men in Lahore, proved their undoing.

President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani apprised the committee about their meetings with US Senator John Kerry where he was told that the case would be decided on the basis of justice and the principle of sovereign equality.

“The meeting also reiterated the position of the party and the government that the strategic partnership and mutually beneficial relations between the two countries should not be allowed to be sacrificed by making them hostage to a single incident,” the president’s spokesman Farhatullah Babar said.

The president informed the committee that he had impressed upon the chairman of the US Senate’s Foreign Relations Committee that the Davis issue had several dimensions that needed to be taken into consideration by both sides.

He said he had told Senator Kerry that there was an urgent need to proceed with caution, showing respect to the sensibilities of all concerned.

He said the matter was before a court which had already ruled that it would decide the issue of immunity for Davis.

The prime minister said he had also suggested that the US needed to take into account the ground realities and acknowledge that the principal stakeholders in the case were the families of those killed and the people of Pakistan.

“The meeting discussed in depth the political situation with particular reference to coalition politics, recent political developments and the emerging scenario,” Mr Babar said.