Islamabad - Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf on Thursday rejected pressure from former premier Benazir Bhutto to make a snap decision on a power-sharing deal that would see him quit as army chief.
One day after his exiled rival, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, claimed that Gen Musharraf had decided to give up the post, his spokesman said: “No decision has been made. When he will decide, he will announce it.”
“While the president believes in dialogue and deliberations on all important issues he never works under any pressure or ultimatum,” Musharraf’s spokesman, retired Major General Rashid Qureshi, said in a statement.
“The president would take all decisions only in national interest at appropriate times according to the constitution and law,” he said in the first official reaction from Musharraf’s camp on talks in London.
The sticking point between Bhutto and Musharraf’s representatives has been whether the president will shed his uniform before he stands for re-election by parliament in September or October, political sources said.
Ms Bhutto said from London that she hoped for a breakthrough in the negotiations “in the next few days” and that Gen Musharraf’s silence on his military role “could be a tactical rather that strategic retreat” until all issues had been resolved.
Bhutto told Britain’s Guardian newspaper on Thursday that Musharraf had also agreed to drop corruption charges against her, her husband and dozens of other lawmakers in a general amnesty covering the period from 1988 to 1999.
“A lot of progress has been made, particularly on the uniform. But it’s for the president to make an announcement,” she added.
She said he had until Friday to respond. “There are no ultimatums, but we need to know where we stand by then.”
Bhutto, a two-time premier from 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1996, said she may now return to Pakistan as early as September. She still faces a raft of corruption charges that have caused her to live abroad.
The negotiations with Bhutto began to cause rifts in the goverment.
Religious Affairs Minister Ijaz-ul-Haq - the son of General Zia-ul-Haq, the late military dictator who had Bhutto’s own father hanged - said Musharraf should take parliament into confidence if he wanted it to re-elect him.