Pakistan’s ruling coalition has agreed to impeach Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, party sources said yesterday.
“The coalition parties have agreed in principle to launch an impeachment motion,” a senior coalition source said after three days of talks between the leaders of the alliance.
A spokesman for the two main parties in the coalition said a formal announcement of the decision from the meetings was due to be made later yesterday.
“There was a major breakthrough in the talks late last night. We have agreed to impeach the president,” a senior member of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party said.
An official from slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, which is now led by her widower Asif Ali Zardari, confirmed the decision.
Officials said that the breakthrough came when Sharif assured Zardari that he could count on the support of some former members of the PML-N who are currently members of a pro-Musharraf party.
Musharraf seized power in a military coup in October 1999 and ruled Pakistan for eight years with the backing of the US, which counts him as a key ally in the “war on terror.”
But his popularity slumped after he ousted the chief justice and imposed a state of emergency last November to prevent challenges to his re-election as president.
Musharraf stepped down as army chief in November last year. The parties of Bhutto and Sharif then trounced his allies in general elections in February.
The parties have also agreed to restore judges sacked by Musharraf under emergency rule but were still working out the details, the party sources said.
They said that a charge sheet on Musharraf’s position and performance as president would be drawn up and submitted to parliament to be signed by at least half of all members of parliament in the coming days.
The speaker of the national assembly, or lower house of parliament, would then notify Musharraf and ask him to defend his position within seven to 15 days, they said.
The national assembly is in recess but party officials said that any impeachment motion could initially be launched in the senate or upper house.
TV channels reported that the government was set to recall the national assembly as early as next week.
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