Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf’s aides are trying to secure a deal with the ruling coalition under which he could quit in order to avoid facing impeachment or criminal charges, officials said yesterday.
Musharraf’s spokesman, Major-General Rashid Qureshi, criticized as “baseless” Western newspaper reports that he would stand down, but presidential allies and coalition officials both indicated that he was considering his resignation.
“Talks are under way and many people are interested that the issue is settled amicably without going into the impeachment of President Pervez Musharraf,” key ally and former deputy information minister Tariq Azim said.
The coalition, led by the parties of former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, is expected to launch proceedings on Monday to end the president’s nine-year rule.
Azim refused to rule out the possibility that Musharraf could quit, saying only: “My belief is that the president does not intend to leave the country. There is no question of him leaving Pakistan.”
FIGUREHEAD
Another possibility was to “reduce status of the president to a figurehead” without the powers to dissolve parliament and appoint armed forces chiefs, Azim said.
A senior coalition official confirmed that there were talks with the presidential camp about Musharraf resigning in return for a guarantee against prosecution for imposing emergency rule in November last year.
But the official warned: “Musharraf is an unstable quantity.”
Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, declared a state of emergency on Nov. 3 to force through his re-election as president for another five-year term.
Qureshi rejected reports in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Financial Times that Musharraf would resign in the coming days.
“I don’t know where they get such baseless information,” Qureshi said. “It becomes very unimportant for me to comment on these reports. I have been hearing all this for the past many months.”
The Wall Street Journal quoted an unidentified source as saying: “Musharraf will neither face impeachment nor be prosecuted ...we expect a major development in the next 48 hours.”
The Financial Times quoted officials as saying that the army, which Musharraf led until November last year, had played a key role in brokering a deal between the president and the coalition.
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