Rauf Klasra & Asim Yasin - High Stakes Poker - Gilani, Kayani meet Zardari; president rejects reconciliation plan

The political crisis in the country took a plunge on Friday when in a dramatic move, a defiant President Asif Ali Zardari outrightly rejected the Washington-London backed reconciliation formula involving Prime Minister Syed Yusuf Raza Gilani and ordered a crackdown on the media to stifle lawyers’ long march. The intervention of Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani during separate meetings with the president and prime minister appeared to have produced no breakthrough in the deadlock before the long march approaches Islamabad. PM Gilani was reportedly offended after the president refused to oblige his repeated requests of taking the reconciliation route as before leaving the PM House for meeting the president, he was hopeful that given the American-UK and Establishment backing, Zardari would not say no to him.

“Yes, I can consider these options as part of a new reconciliation deal but only after March 16 so that no one should think that I had taken the decision under pressure from the foreign or local forces,” a source quoted the president as telling his two guests at the Presidency, who called on him on Friday in a bid to bring some sanity to the proceedings. But PM Gilani had to review his own thoughts after meeting the president, who was still not ready to accommodate any formula.