Posted on 06/26/2004 9:23:07 AM PDT by blam
Pakistan PM tenders his resignation
June 26 2004 at 02:57PM
By Zeeshan Haider and Sheree Sardar
Islamabad - Pakistan's Prime Minister Zafarullah Khan Jamali offered to resign on Saturday, party sources said, ending a 19-month tenure during which he failed to emerge from the shadows of the powerful military.
Jamali tendered his resignation after meeting President General Pervez Musharraf, and sources from Jamali's pro-military party said a formal announcement would be made at a meeting of the Pakistan Muslim League later on Saturday.
"He has resigned," a senior PML leader said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Analysts believe Musharraf has been seeking to replace Jamali Analysts believe Musharraf has been seeking to replace Jamali with a more dynamic figure better able to to counter parliamentary opposition and pursue his reform programmes more aggressively.
Potential replacements for Jamali include Commerce Minister Humayun Akhtar Khan, a successful businessman with close links to the military.
Jamali's resignation would raise fresh concerns over the state of democracy in Pakistan, nearly two years after 2002 elections formally ended military dictatorship.
The West has been slow to criticise Musharraf, who is a key player in the US-led war on terror.
Musharraf has been locked in a bitter standoff with members of the parliamentary opposition, ranging from the exiled former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto to a six-party conservative Islamic alliance.
The opposition complains that the general has stifled democracy since he took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, when he ousted then Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, now also in exile.
In the latest political clash, the Islamic bloc demanded that Musharraf fulfil his commitment to step down as head of the army by the end of the year.
The president has hinted he may not honour a deal whereby he promised to hand in his uniform in return for opposition support for controversial constitutional amendments that gave him the power to sack the prime minister and dissolve parliament.
Western diplomats say Musharraf's role as army chief is key to his authority in Pakistan, where the military has ruled for more than half its history since independence in 1947.
Musharraf is a key player in US foreign policy, dropping Pakistani support for the Afghan Taliban in 2001 after the September 11 attacks on the United States that year and transferring hundreds of al Qaeda suspects into US custody.
Musharraf is also pushing a lasting peace with nuclear-armed rival India, with which Pakistan has fought three wars, two of them over the disputed region of Kashmir.
Jamali's resignation offer comes on the eve of talks between Indian and Pakistani bureaucrats in New Delhi, the first time the neighbours have met to discuss their central Kashmir dispute since leaders held unsuccessful talks in mid-2001.
Political analysts said Jamali's resignation was unlikely to have a major impact on the negotiations in the long term or on Pakistan's role in the war on terror, since Musharraf controls key foreign policy decisions.
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