ISLAMBAD, 16 November 2007 — Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said he would step down as army chief before Dec. 1 and appointed the chairman of the Senate (upper house) as caretaker prime minister.
“The president has said he will give up his uniform before Dec. 1,” Attorney General Malik Mohammad Qayyum told a news conference here yesterday.
Musharraf and other officials have previously said he will wait for the Supreme Court to rule on the legality of his Oct. 6 re-election as president before quitting the army.
Asked what would happen if the court — stripped of hostile judges under emergency laws — ruled against Musharraf, Qayyum said: “He will decide about it himself. He has already appointed his successor.” Musharraf named former spy chief Ashfaq Kiyani as the heir apparent to the post of chief of army staff in October.
Senate Chairman Mohammadmian Soomro will head a caretaker government that will be sworn in today, said Railway Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed, a close Musharraf ally.
Soomro, 57 and a member of Musharraf’s ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Q party, will be responsible for guiding an interim administration to prepare for elections promised by Musharraf by Jan. 9.
He takes over from Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, whose term ended when Parliament dissolved at midnight.
He is head of the Soomro tribe of the Sindh province and comes from a family with decades of political experience, it said.
Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto said that Musharraf would be unacceptable as president even if he shed his army uniform.
In comments that appeared to cement her break with Musharraf following his imposition of emergency rule, she said too many promises had been broken for her to work with him. Commenting on Musharraf’s promise that he will doff his uniform by Dec. 1, Benazir, who is under house arrest, told private Dawn television in an interview that it was too late.
In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Benazir said she hoped to form a government of national unity to replace Musharraf ahead of elections, and is contacting other opposition parties to get them on board.
“I am talking to other opposition parties to find out whether they are in a position to come together,” she said. “We need to see whether we can come up with an interim government of national consensus to whom power can be handed.” Benazir left open the question of whether she, or someone else, would lead such a government, saying it was a subject that would have to be worked out in negotiations.
But she said a consensus must be reached that would ensure an orderly transition should Musharraf agree to step down. Benazir made the comments shortly after US Consul General in Lahore Bryan Hunt visited her.
She said Washington is concerned about a power vacuum in Pakistan, and wanted to know if she would still consider working with Musharraf.
“He came to find out whether I could work with Gen. Musharraf, and I told him that it was very difficult to work with someone who instead of taking us toward democracy took us back toward military dictatorship,” she said, adding, “I think Musharraf’s time is over.”
— Additional input from agencies
