FROM PAGE 1

The opposition blames Khan for failing to revive the economy and crack down on corruption. Khan has said, without showing evidence, that the move to oust him was orchestrated by the United States, a claim Washington denies.

Khan later yesterday said his evidence of the conspiracy was accepted by the National Security Committee.

“When the country’s highest national security body confirms this, then the [parliamentary] proceedings were irrelevant, the numbers were irrelevant,” Khan said.

US officials yesterday denied any involvement.

“There is no truth to these allegations,” a State Department spokesperson told Reuters yesterday, adding “we respect and support Pakistan’s constitutional process and the rule of law.”

The opposition and analysts say Khan, an international cricket champion turned politician who rose to power in 2018 on the military’s support, had fallen out with it, a charge he and the military deny.

“Army has nothing to do with the political process,” Major General Babar Iftikhar, the head of the military’s public relations wing, said when asked about any involvement in yesterday’s events.

No prime minister has finished a full five-year term since Pakistan’s independence from Britain in 1947, and generals on several occasions have ruled the country, which is perennially at odds with fellow nuclear-armed neighbour India.

President Arif Alvi, also of Khan’s party, approved the prime minister’s request to dissolve parliament and cabinet. Khan will remain prime minister, said Fawad Chaudhry, the former minister of information and law.

Farrukh Habib, another former minister, said fresh elections would be held in 90 days, although that decision rests with the president and the election commission.

Deputy Attorney General Raja Khalid, a top prosecutor, resigned, calling the government’s dissolving of parliament unconstitutional. “What has happened can only be expected in the rule of a dictator,” he told local media.

The political fight comes as Pakistan faces high inflation, dwindling foreign reserves and widening deficits. The country is in a tough International Monetary Fund bailout programme.

Islamabad also faces international pressure to prod the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan to meet human rights commitments while trying to limit instability there.

Khan lost his majority in parliament after allies quit his coalition government and he suffered a spate of defections within his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party.

A prominent newspaper had recently said Khan was “as good as gone”, but he had urged his supporters to take to the streets yesterday ahead of the planned vote.

On the streets of the capital Islamabad, there was a heavy police and paramilitary presence, with shipping containers used to block off roads, according to a Reuters witness.