ISLAMABAD (AFP)
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf will not stand down, his spokesman said on Monday, as the ruling coalition put the finishing touches to impeachment charges against the key U.S. ally.
Parliament's lower house was also due to convene in a bid to ramp up the pressure on the former general, although it is not expected to formally launch impeachment proceedings until later this week.
"There is no reason that he should resign. Everything they are saying is false, so why should he resign?" presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi told AFP.
The spokesman declined to comment on Musharraf's plans. His options include trying to defeat impeachment in parliament, dissolving parliament or declaring a state of emergency.
It was the first comment from Musharraf's camp since the coalition announced on Thursday that it would launch impeachment proceedings to unseat the president nearly nine years after he grabbed power in a coup.
"The work of the impeachment committee is almost complete. It is giving finishing touches to the charge sheet," Farzana Raja, a senior member of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) of slain former premier Benazir Bhutto, told AFP.
The coalition, led by the PPP and the party of another ex-prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, won elections in February -- and has been at loggerheads with Musharraf ever since.
The coalition is trying to give Musharraf time to quit without facing the humiliation of impeachment, while piling on the pressure with expected no-confidence motions in the four provincial assemblies, media reports said.
Some of his allies on Sunday joined coalition calls for him to go. But the real key to Musharraf's survival is likely to be whether he gets the support of the powerful army, analysts say. He stood down as chief of the military in November last year.
The military has ruled Pakistan for more than half its 61-year history but Musharraf's successor, General Ashfaq Kayani, has expressed a desire to keep the army out of politics.
If he gets Kayani's support Musharraf could try to dissolve parliament and head off impeachment. But if Kayani views the impeachment process as too humiliating, he could lean on Musharraf to stand down. |
