ISLAMABAD, 31 July 2007 — Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf may hang up his army uniform to pave the way for a pact with former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto after the pair met in Abu Dhabi, a minister said yesterday.
Military ruler Musharraf and Benazir held secret talks in the Gulf emirate on Friday on a pre-election power-sharing deal, but reached no agreement on two key issues, Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afghan Niazi told AFP.
The sticking points were the issue of Musharraf’s dual role as president and head of Pakistan’s powerful army and a bar that prevents Benazir having a third term as premier, Niazi said.
Bhutto, who has lived in self-imposed exile in London and Dubai since 1998 due to corruption allegations against her, insisted Sunday she would not strike a deal with Musharraf so long as he remained army chief.
“The two met in Abu Dhabi on Friday to hammer out a political understanding so that moderate forces can join hands to defeat extremists in the coming general elections,” Niazi said.
General elections are due by early 2008. Officials have said Musharraf aims to be re-elected separately by Parliament as president-in-uniform, ahead of a constitutional deadline for him to quit the army by the end of this year.
But Niazi said he believed that Musharraf “would be willing to shed his uniform if he has Benazir’s PPP (Pakistan People’s Party) and the ruling Pakistan Muslim League behind him.” The secret Benazir-Musharraf meeting has still not been officially confirmed by their spokesmen.
The talks come as Musharraf faces trouble on all sides, from a wave of Islamist attacks sparked by the army’s storming of a radical Islamabad mosque to a bruising legal defeat by the country’s chief justice.
In a related development, Pakistan’s Supreme Court is to begin hearing a challenge to President Musharraf’s military role in the first such case since the country’s top judge was reinstated, officials said yesterday.
The legal appeal filed by Qazi Hussain Ahmad, leader of Pakistan’s main alliance of hard-line Islamic parties, says Musharraf should give up his post as army chief next month, court officials said.
The case comes just over a week after the court handed a political blow to Musharraf by overturning his controversial suspension of Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry. Chaudhry’s supporters had claimed that Musharraf tried to oust him because he wanted a pliant judiciary to make it easier to defy the constitution by staying on as president-in-uniform past the end of 2007.
