With the Pakistan People's Party and the Pakistan Muslim League-N expected to form a coalition government in Pakistan, the United Kingdom and the Unites States are apparently putting huge pressure on the two parties not to remove President Pervez Musharraf or try to impeach him.
Senior figures in the PPP and PML-N told The Times daily that British and US officials had urged them not to try to impeach Musharraf or reinstate the deposed chief justice, who would be sure to invalidate the President's re-election last year.
The allegations were leveled after British and US envoys met several party leaders following the February 18 general elections. "There is huge pressure from America to work with Musharraf, but we'll do whatever we feel is right," a senior PPP leader was quoted as saying by the newspaper.
A senior aide to Sharif said: "The British and the Americans are working together on this. They don't understand that it's time for Musharraf to go."
Robert Brinkley, the British High Commissioner to Pakistan, held talks on Thursday with Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower and successor as head of the Pakistan Peoples Party, which won the most seats. On Friday, Brinkely met Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister, whose Pakistan Muslim League-N won the second-highest number of seats.
Anne Patterson, the US Ambassador, met Zardari on Wednesday and Friday, and held further talks on Friday with the head of the Awami National Party, another potential coalition partner. She met Musharraf on Tuesday and Friday and is due to meet Sharif on Tuesday and Wednesday, the report said, quoting US Embassy officials.
Brian Hunt, the American Consul in Lahore, also met Sharif's brother Shahbaz, on Wednesday as well as Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent figure in the PPP, who led the lawyers' movement against Musharraf last year.
British and US officials publicly insist that the meetings were routine or introductory, and deny urging any party not to remove Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999. "It is up to those elected to form a government. We look forward to working with that government, whoever its leaders will be," the report quoted a US Embassy spokeswoman as saying.
But diplomats, according to the report, said the British and US governments, while realising that Musharraf is weakened, are concerned about how a successor might affect Pakistan's co-operation in the war on terror.
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