from Zaki Chehab in Kabul

General Pervez Musharraf and his Corps Commanders have offered Asif Ali Zardari, the jailed husband of PPP leader Benazir Bhutto, the Chairmanship of the Pakistani Senate if the PPP would support and join Musharraf and his political set up, a leading Pakistani newspaper columnist claimed on Tuesday.

This is the first time some details of the secret negotiations between Musharraf’s men and Asif Zardari have been revealed, although it has been known for a while that Zardari was being offered so many deals.

The information has been revealed by Nusrat Javeed, a leading journalist and columnist of Daily ‘The News’ who said in his latest column that for many weeks high officials of the government have been holding intense but discreet meetings with Zardari.

Nusrat Javeed himself has been meeting Asif Ali Zardari in recent days and weeks and in one of his recent columns had even predicted that Asif would be bailed out by the Supreme Court on October 27, when his bail petition was due to be heard. The Court, however, extended the hearing and no new date has yet been fixed.

“I know the exact dates and timings of these meetings and some of the high officials as well. Naming them will expose my sources,” he wrote discussing the statement by Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz in which he had said that cases of Zardari, Javed Hashmi and Yousuf Raza Gilani would be decided by the courts.

If Zardari was to accept the Chairmanship of the Senate, it would be for the second time that he would have moved from a jail cell to take oath of a high government office. In 1993 he was appointed as a Minister and was sworn in by the then President Ghulam Ishaq Khan who had earlier dismissed Benazir's government in 1990 and started corruption cases against Zardari.

“Asif remains reluctant to accept the packages being offered to him. In return for his release “by the courts,” the jailed husband of the former prime minister is being asked to “deliver” the Pakistan Peoples Party (to General Musharraf),” Nusrat continued.

Giving more details, he claimed the General was also offering the Chief Ministership of Sindh and several Federal ministries in the cabinet of Shaukat Aziz.

“Asif or Benazir can also get elected as chairperson of the Senate, if any of them wants,” he revealed.

He disclosed that Benazir Bhutto was reluctant to accept the offers of General Musharraf. “She has to consider a few things before pledging support to General Musharraf. After all, Musharraf appeared so keen to appoint Makhdoom Amin Fahim as the prime minister of this country, immediately after elections of 2002. The PPP played hard to get. After losing out the prime minister’s office, for compulsions of some principles, why the party should now accept a few ministries under Shaukat Aziz,” Nusrat asked in his column.

He wrote: “All the offers, recently conveyed to the PPP through Asif, are aimed at one objective: ensuring the survival of the civilian façade that our Praetorian masters have erected for covering their absolute control through elections of October 2002, until the completion of its term in 2007. Ms. Bhutto and her party are being urged to become stakeholders of this system.”

“Their joining it could also make the world feel as if all the “enlightened moderates” of Pakistan are now united to fight the final battle to defeat the Taliban-friendly Mullahs.”

He continued: “Ms. Bhutto, however, is very right in thinking you cannot strengthen the enlightened moderation in Pakistan by sharing the cabinet berths with the likes of Wasi Zafar and Dr. Sher Afgan. The radical thoughts of Sheikh Rashid Ahmad do not help either.”

These three ministers of the Musharraf Government have become known for their unabashed shamelessness and are called as agent provocateurs by many cabinet colleagues of PM Shaukat Aziz. They have also earned the scorn of the Parliamentary Opposition and the intelligentsia.

Nusrat Javeed said Benazir Bhutto and Zardari were interested only in free, fair and fresh elections. “This is the minimum Bhutto would want to get before approving the enlightened moderation under the guidance of General Musharraf.”