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ISLAMABAD - President Pervez Musharraf rejected calls to declare emergency powers and wants Pakistan's elections to happen, a spokesman said, after reports the beleaguered leader would opt for authoritarian rule.
Private television channels and newspapers had reported General Musharraf was poised to take a step that would probably delay elections due by the turn of the year and could result in restrictions on rights of assembly and curbs on the media.
"In the president's view, there is no need at present to impose an emergency," Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani said.
"The president was under pressure from different political parties to impose an emergency, but he believes in holding a free and fair election and is not in favour of any step that hinders it," Durrani added, without specifying the parties.
Members of the ruling coalition have the most to lose at the polls, and Musharraf's own popularity has plunged since he tried in vain to oust the country's most senior judge.
Western countries with troops in Afghanistan are sensitive to any instability in nuclear-armed Pakistan, whose help is crucial to fighting the Taleban insurgency and al Qaeda.
US President George W. Bush on Thursday urged Musharraf to hold a free and fair election.
"That's what we've been talking to him about and I'm hopeful they will," Bush told a news conference.
Musharraf has been a close US ally since the September 11 attacks in 2001, but the Bush administration has been pressing Pakistan to act against Taleban and al Qaeda fighters hiding in tribal regions on the Afghan border.
A Pakistan government spokesman had suggested Islamabad could justify emergency rule by citing mounting insecurity after a spate of attacks, many of them suicide bombings, by Islamist militants allied to the Taleban and al Qaeda.
Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim Khan said the measure could also be warranted by comments from politicians in Washington that the United States should be prepared to strike inside Pakistan if it had actionable intelligence about al Qaeda or Taleban targets.
But analysts and opposition leaders feared Musharraf might use emergency powers to overcome constitutional difficulties in getting re-elected by the sitting assemblies while still army chief and to stave off parliamentary elections.
Musharraf plans to get re-elected in uniform by mid-October before national and provincial assemblies are dissolved for parliamentary elections due in December or January.
He commands the simple majority needed to win re-election in the current assemblies. But there is a strong possibility constitutional challenges could be upheld by a Supreme Court that delivered a ruling on July 20 to reinstate the chief justice who Musharraf had spent four months trying to sack.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Musharraf overnight and they discussed "the ongoing, evolving political developments in Pakistan," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington.
He said the two had a "good conversation" but declined further comment on the call, which lasted about 15 minutes and took place after the reports about emergency rule.
Benazir Bhutto, Pakistan's former prime minister and the self-exiled leader of the largest opposition party, said she was "very relieved" that the reports were not true.
"I thought the imposition of emergency would be a very retrograde step and take us further away from the goal of the democratization of Pakistan," she told Reuters Television.
Bhutto, who met secretly with Musharraf in Abu Dhabi last month amid speculation of some kind of power-sharing deal, said her Pakistan People's Party was in talks aimed at promoting election reforms that would guarantee a free and fair vote.
Television news channels first reported that Musharraf was going to declare an emergency late on Wednesday night and newspapers ran banner headlines on Thursday morning. It was hours before the first definitive denial was made.
"There is no possibility of an emergency," president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League, Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, told reporters at parliament.
An aide to the president, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a strategy to deal with the problems Musharraf faces was being worked out but declaring an emergency had "never been under consideration during the past few days."
The aide, who attended a meeting of Musharraf's closest advisers on Thursday, said the leadership was mystified by how the story had emerged, although one senior political ally had told Reuters that a decision on an emergency was imminent.
Another member of Musharraf's inner circle suggested the government wanted to gauge reactions if it took the step.
- REUTERS
