Pakistan's prime minister is heading to Karachi to try to restore calm in the financial capital, which has been rocked by 31 political killings in just over a week, officials said. While the violence over the past week has been confined to targeted tit-for-tat shootings, there are fears street clashes could erupt which would batter investor confidence and could cause far-reaching disruption. “There's no way that the government can afford to open up another front and that's why the prime minister is coming to Karachi in an attempt to resolve this,” said a provincial government official. Meanwhile, scary central Pakistan People's Party (PPP) leaders have maintained a conscious silence on the unabated bloodshed going on in Karachi for the past five days with mistrust among some key partners of the ruling alliance mounting. “It is a very sensitive issue and my reaction on the Karachi target killings might be counterproductive,” a key PPP central office bearer told this correspondent on condition of anonymity. “We don't want to get into any kind of confrontation.” He stated that he would refrain from offering comments that would add fuel to the fire. “But there is no denying that the problem is serious and requires deft handling.” However, the PPP leader accused the Awami National Party (ANP) of being part of the violence in Karachi and suspected that some kind of cooperation has been worked out between the ANP and the Mohajir Qaumi Movement-Haqiqi (MQM-H) and Muthidda Qaumi Movement (MQM) of Altaf Hussain. “Basically it is a war between the MQM and MQM-H that has been going on for over a decade.” But he claimed that at one stage some frontline MQM-H leaders have come to the PPP asking for its help against the MQM, but they were not obliged. They had argued that their workers were being killed by the MQM and had presented a long list of their woes, he said. “The ANP is following the principle: the enemy of my enemy is my friend, which has brought it and MQM-H close to each other,” the PPP leader said but stubbornly refused to come on record to do away with the chaos and anarchy in Karachi. However, presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar said that President Asif Ali Zardari has called for a report on the continuing target killings in the Sindh metropolitan. “Zardari has been in constant touch with the Sindh government and has phoned Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah for a number of times in this connection.” He agreed that the situation was alarming and said that the Sindh chief minister was trying to control it and has held meetings with representatives of different political parties.
