KARACHI: Attempts made by the beleaguered Muttahida Qaumi Movement to seek an audience with Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif remained unsuccessful as he flew back to the capital following a couple of highprofile engagements at an airbase on Wednesday.

The PM spent a busy day in Karachi. He was the chief guest at a Karachi Stock Exchange award function and chaired a meeting of the Sindh apex committee held at an untraditional venue of the PAF Base Faisal instead of Sindh Governor House before returning to Islamabad in the evening.

Under a cloud following startling disclosures by death row prisoner Saulat Mirza, Sindh Governor Dr Ishratul Ibad was conspicuous by his absence from the meeting at the airbase.

Just a day before the PM`s visit, MQMleader Dr Khalid Maqbool Siddiqui told the media that his party had requested the prime minister to give them time to listen to their grievances about the Karachi operation. `We have a lot to tell,` he said.

Besides raising other issues, said MQM sources, the party wanted to present documentary evidence to the PM with regard to the Rangers allegations about the seizure of unlicensed weapons in their March 11 raid on Nine Zero, the MQM headquarters.

However, the party faced disappointment when no one from the federal government informed them about the fate of their request.

`The Rabita [coordination] committee did not get a positive response [from the PM] when it sought time for a meeting with the prime minister,` MQM leader Syed Faisal Subzwari told reporters outside the Sindh Assembly building on Wednesday.

The sources said the MQM believed that they were not given time because of the fact that the PM did not want to meet anMQM delegation.

`This is not because of his [the PM`s] busy schedule ... we think he [the PM] avoided us because he did not want to displease the powers that be,` said an MQM source.

Protest against `media trial` Members of the Sindh Assembly belonging to the MQM staged a protest demonstration outside the assembly building against `the media trial` of the MQM.

Carrying placards inscribed with slogans such as `We reject biased journalism` and `We want justice`, the lawmakers protested against private news channel ARY News.

Speaking on the occasion, Mr Subzwari said his party would not sit idle over what he described as the media trial of MQM chief Altaf Hussain and party workers. He demanded that the media trial of the MQM be stopped forthwith.

He said the pro-Taliban parties and some leaders were plotting to crush the MQM.The MQM`s parliamentary party leader in the Sindh Assembly, Syed Sardar Ahmed, said that criminals should be brought before courts and not before the media for the purpose of character assassination.

Rangers patrol Nine Zero A contingent of the Rangers and police patrolled the Nine Zero area on Wednesday to see whether the MQM had removed barriers from various roads and streets.

Initially, the arrival of masked soldiers in a convoy fuelled speculation that the paramilitary troops were about to carry out another raid on the MQM headquarters.

However, some MQM leaders met them and showed them the `barrier-free` areas.

An MQM leader later told Dawn that the party headquarters had become vulnerable to an attack after the removal of barricades and the patrol by the law enforcement agencies was part of security arrangements for the Nine Zero.