ISLAMABAD: Pakistani Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani yesterday denied that any cracks have appeared in the Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) that leads the country’s ruling coalition.

He told reporters in his home town of Multan that the PPP remains a united force and there exists no divide. He was responding to a statement made by PPP’s Senior Vice Chairman Amin Fahim that the party which was ruling Pakistan was a new PPP and he had no linkage with the “new PPP.” Gilani said the PPP was a party founded by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and its foundations had the blood of former two-time Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

Fahim said that he was distancing himself from the party. “In a surprise development on Sunday evening ... Fahim said a line had been drawn in the PPP,” Dawn reported yesterday. “He distanced himself from the PPP-led government, saying that a new PPP was in the government and he had no relations with it.”

His remarks came on the sidelines of a book release function in Hyderabad and “could be described as the beginning of his public expression of reservations on recent party decisions,” Dawn said. Fahim is apparently sore over the party’s stance on reinstating the Supreme Court judges President Pervez Musharraf had sacked after imposing an emergency last November, as also on the PPP’s ambivalent position on impeaching the president.

The PPP had initially agreed with coalition partner Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz that the judges would be restored but then backtracked, saying this would be part of a package to restore the constitution to as it existed in 1973.

In another development, Musharraf ruled out the possibility of imposition of another martial law. He said that there is no room for martial law in the country and he would keep working to strengthen democracy.

During a meeting with the leader of Muslim League-Q, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, at his camp office here yesterday, Musharraf said that he could address a joint session of Parliament. Both the leaders discussed political and economic situation and other important issues during the meeting.