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Talks over Musharraf 'resignation deal’ on

Pak coalition completes charges

AFP, Islamabad
Pakistani President Pervez : Musharraf s aides are in talks with the government to secure a deal under which he could quit to avoid facing impeachment or criminal charges, officials said yesterday.
Musharraf s spokesman Rashid Qureshi condemned "malicious" Western media reports that he would stand down, but allies and officials from the ruling coalition both indicated that he was consid-eringhis resignation.
"Talks arc underway and many people are interested that the issue is settled amicably without going into the impeachment of President Pervez Musharraf," key ally and former deputy information minis-terTariq Azim told AFP
Azim refused to rule out the possibility that Musharraf could
quit before he is impeached, add ing though that another option was for him to become a "figurehead'' without the power to dissolve parliament.
The coalition, led by the parties of former premiers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, said on Friday it had completed an impeachment charge sheet against Musharraf and would lodge it in parliament next week.
It needs a two-thirds majority in the upper and lower houses to unseat Musharraf. The constitution says there can be a gap of up to 17 days between filing the charges and the impeachment vote.
Senior coalition members confirmed that there were talks with the presidential camp about Musharraf resigning, in return for a guarantee against prosecution for imposing emergency rule in November last year.
"His close aides approached the government and were clearly told that the only way to avoid impeachment is to step down -- the government does not want him to remain in the presidency," one coalition official told AFP.
The president would be allowed to "go scot-free if he agrees to step down" but details were being finalised, the official said.
The coalition piled further pressure on Musharraf when law-makers in southwestern Baluchistan province overwhelmingly approved a no-confidence motion in him, following similar votes in the other three provinces.
But Major General Qureshi, Musharrafs spokesman, rejected reports in The Wall Street Journal. The New York Times. Washington Post and Financial Times that Musharraf would resign as early as in the next 48 hours.
Qureshi rejected the "totally baseless and malicious... recent spate of unsubstantiated news reports and rumours being spread that President Pervez Musharraf was resigning."
The reports were hurting Pakistan’s economy, he added.
The chief of the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim Leaguc-Q party, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, said Musharraf would defend himself in parliament.
"They are just trying to put pressure on him to quit but he is not going to quit." he told Dawn News television.
Musharraf s other options are to dissolve the government or declare another emergency. But allies say they have advised against it as Pakistan's powerful army has remained silent about whether it would support him.
Musharraf, who toppled Sharif
and seized power in a 1999 military coup, declared a state of emergency on November 3 to force through his re-election as president for another five years.
Supported politically and financially by the United States as a lynchpin in the "war on terror" after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Musharraf spent the first eight years of his time in power relatively untroubled.
But his popularity nosedived after he tried to sack the chief justice in March 2007. He quit as army chief in November of that year and his political allies were then thrashed in general elections in February.