The crushing electoral defeat of his allies in parliament may be forcing General Musharraf to quit the presidency, according to The Telegraph.
One close confidante said that the president believed he had run out of options after three of the main parties who triumphed in last week's poll announced they would form a coalition government together, and also pledged to reinstate the country's chief justice and 60 other judges sacked by Mr Musharraf in November.
"He has already started discussing the exit strategy for himself," a close friend said. "I think it is now just a matter of days and not months because he would like to make a graceful exit on a high."
According to senior aides, Mr Musharraf wants to avoid a power struggle with the newly elected parliament, in which his opponents will be close to the two-thirds majority needed to impeach him and remove him from office.
Reportedly, the US tried to twist the opposition's arm to force it to work with Musharraf, but there are signs that this is backfiring. Surely, the electoral result was as much a defeat or Islamic extremists as for Musharraf, but the era of Pakistan as a key ally in the war on terror may well be coming to an end.
The Pakistan People's Party, which swept the parliamentary elections last week on Sunday called for an end to military operations in the southwestern Pakistani province where intelligence officials believe Taliban leaders may be holed up.
In a resolution issued Sunday after a meeting of top leaders, the PPP called on the army to immediately stop its operation in Balochistan, a province near the Afghan border.
The party also asked that all prisoners, be released and said it would work toward giving "maximum provincial autonomy" to the area.
"The PPP on behalf of the people of Pakistan apologizes to the people of the province of Balochistan for the atrocities and injustices committed against them and pledges to embark on a new highway of healing and mutual respect," the party said in a news release.
The half-hearted confrontational policies of the previous administration have been everything but successful. The tribal areas are already, and have been for years, de facto autonomous, not to say independent. If, however, Pakistan stops pressuring the militants hosting the extremist terrorist organisations altogether, al-Qaeda and the Taliban will be in an even better position to rearm and regroup. That is very bad news for Afghanistan, and for the rest of the world.
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