Musharraf 'will not stand down'

The Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf will not resign, as the ruling coalition prepares impeachment charges.

Posters of the Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf are seen on a stall in Lahore.

The Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf will not stand down, his spokesman said today, as the ruling coalition put the finishing touches to impeachment charges against the key US ally. Parliament's lower house was also due to convene in a bid to increase 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?" the presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi said.

The spokesman declined to comment on Mr 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 the Musharraf 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, said.

"We gave him a chance to resign, we gave him a few months. But we have come to the conclusion that now the people of Pakistan, through their elected representatives in the parliament, will have to do that," she said. 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 Mr Musharraf ever since. Farhatullah Babar, a PPP spokesman, would not comment on reports that the charges being listed against Musharraf included corruption and murder.

Officials said although the government had summoned parliament to sit on Monday - Musharraf's 65th birthday - the charges would likely be filed later in the week. The coalition is trying to give Mr 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. The coalition needs a two-thirds majority to impeach Mr Musharraf.

Some of his allies yesterday joined coalition calls for him to go. But the real key to Mr 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 Mr Musharraf's successor, Gen Ashfaq Kayani, has expressed a desire to keep the army out of politics.

If he gets Gen Kayani's support Mr Musharraf could try to dissolve parliament and head off impeachment. But if Gen Kayani views the impeachment process as too humiliating, he could lean on Mr Musharraf to stand down. *AP