NYT : Political Ally Says Musharraf Will Quit Army Post

Political Ally Says Musharraf Will Quit Army Post

By CARLOTTA GALL | September 1, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Aug. 31 — The president of Pakistan’s ruling party, one of President Pervez Musharraf’s closest political allies, said Friday that General Musharraf would resign from his post as chief of army staff before parliamentary elections scheduled for the first week of January, but said he would run for re-election as president in the coming weeks, while still in uniform.

On Wednesday, a former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, said the general had agreed to resign from the military before running for re-election as part of their negotiations for a power-sharing deal. On Thursday, government officials said he had made no such deal.

The comments on Friday by the party chief, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, made it clear that the general’s intention to resign his military post was unrelated to the negotiations with Ms. Bhutto. He said the driving factor behind the general’s decision to resign was the newly independent Supreme Court and the likelihood that the chief justice would declare his continued military rule unconstitutional.

At the same time, the president would not risk resigning his military post before his re-election to another presidential term was assured, he said.

“If the chief justice attacks him, he can stay as army chief,” he said. “These are our recommendations. Nothing is final.” The timetable laid out by Mr. Hussain was the clearest indication of General Musharraf’s plans as his presidential term and a constitutional amendment allowing him to hold the dual posts of army chief and president both expire.

“He will take off the uniform before general elections” for a new Parliament over the winter, Mr. Hussain said in an interview at his residence here. Some supporters were urging the general to keep his military post, Mr. Hussain said, but he was among those urging the general to relinquish it.

“People say ‘don’t,’ but I am very sure that he will,” he said. General Musharraf will announce the date of his military resignation after standing for re-election by the electoral college in coming weeks, he said.

If that plan falls through, Mr. Hussain outlined a “last option,” which was to delay the presidential election, dissolve Parliament and call parliamentary elections, which would leave the president and prime minister in place until a new Parliament was elected in two or three months.

According to Pakistani law, General Musharraf has to stand for re-election by the national and provincial assemblies between Sept. 15 and Oct. 15 — no more than two months and no less than one month before his term expires Nov. 15 — and parliamentary elections have to be held by mid-January. An amendment allowing him to serve simultaneously as president and army chief runs out on Dec. 31.

The chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, was suspended by General Musharraf in March, but was reinstated in July after enormous public protests. He remains the real obstacle to General Musharraf’s re-election, Mr. Hussain said. “Whenever we try to think of some allowance, at once the chief justice comes in front,” he said. An aide to Mr. Hussain who was present at the interview described the chief justice’s mood as “vengeful.”

Mr. Hussain said efforts were under way to reach out to Mr. Chaudhry. “He should behave like a judge,” he said.

Mr. Hussain accused Ms. Bhutto, who has led the opposition Pakistan People’s Party from exile, of trying to take credit for General Musharraf’s decision to resign his uniformed post, and said the discussions with her in London had stalled. He said the agreement with her was reduced to her early demands that corruption cases against her would be dropped and in return her party would abstain from, but not disrupt, the presidential election.

But General Musharraf still needed her cooperation, and that of another opposition leader, Maulana Fazlur Rehman, in passing a constitutional amendment that would allow him to get around the requirement that government officials be out of office for two years before running for election, Mr. Hussain said.

He admitted that time was running short, since the government would need at least five days to pass the amendment through both houses of Parliament before the president submitted nomination papers by mid-September.

Talks with Ms. Bhutto were continuing in London with the head of the National Security Council, Tariq Aziz, a trusted aide of General Musharraf, he said.

Mr. Hussain said his party was against Ms. Bhutto’s demand that the ban on prime ministers’ serving for the third time be lifted, which would allow her, as well as Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister ousted by General Musharraf’s 1999 coup, to run again for prime minister. She had also made new demands, he said, including the withdrawal of corruption charges against 11 of her close associates, the removal of the attorney general, the appointment of a new election commissioner and for herself to be made chairman of the Senate.

Mr. Hussain said there would not be any pre-election collaboration with the Pakistan People’s Party but did not discount a coalition, or a government of national consensus, after the election.

He lamented that the fortunes of General Musharraf had been damaged by the chief justice’s suspension. “Except for this judicial crisis, we were going in a very good way,” he said.

General Musharraf’s initiatives in fighting terrorism and handling Afghanistan had involved difficult and unpopular decisions but he had managed them well, he said. “One wrong thing has spoiled the whole,” he said. “Still, he is not afraid.”