ISLAMABAD: On the eve of a Parliament session called to impeach Musharraf, a joint committee of the Pakistan Muslim League (N) and Pakistan People’s Party yesterday prepared a charge sheet against the president. The committee includes Information Minister Sherry Rehman, Law Minister Farooq Naek, Farhatullah Baabar, Sen. Raza Rabbani, Ishaq Daar, Chaudhry Nisar Ali and legal and constitutional experts from the two parties.
Rehman told reporters: “We have prepared a formal charge sheet but it is being scrutinized now before being presented to the leaders of the PPP and PML (N). We intend to table the final version in the National Assembly on Monday.”
Rehman, who belongs to the PPP, demanded that Musharraf quit honorably before the motion is tabled in Parliament.
Calls for Musharraf’s resignation also came from members of a party allied to the president. “Musharraf should step down before the start of the impeachment proceedings, because the country cannot afford confrontation any more,” Sardar Bahadur Khan, an MP from the Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid) said. Khan said more than 25 MPs from the PML-Q wanted Musharraf to resign. Coalition leader “(Asif Ali) Zardari has offered a safe passage to Musharraf,” he claimed. “The president should avail himself of this opportunity to make an honorable exit,” he said, adding that a resignation would be “good for the nation and strengthen the democratic system.”
But this view was not shared by the PML (N) leadership. “We will make Musharraf accountable for the Red Mosque operation, military operations in Balochistan and the tribal areas and his misconduct in twice subverting the constitution and destroying judiciary,” said a spokesman for PML (N).
A group of former generals was equally critical of Musharraf and wanted him tried for various offenses after impeachment.
A spokesman for the president, meanwhile, denied that the embattled leader had “misappropriated” millions of dollars of military aid provided to Pakistan by the United States since the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.
“The allegations are absurd and baseless. Every penny that we got in aid since 2001 has been accounted for,” presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi said.
Zardari alleged in an interview with Britain’s Sunday Times that Musharraf had “not been passing on all the $1 billion a year that the Americans have been giving for the armed forces.”
