Gen Musharraf warns of Pakistan coup after crisis meeting in London
Pakistan's former military dictator has warned of a new army-led coup against the government as he prepared to launch a new political party in London on Friday.
by Damien McElroy, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
Published: 9:00PM BST 30 Sep 2010
Pervez Musharraf Photo: GEOFF PUGH Gen Pervez Musharraf said the army should be given a constitutional role in the government of the Muslim state.
"The situation in Pakistan can only be solved when the military has some role," he said. "If you want stability, checks and balances in the democratic structure of Pakistan, the military ought to have some sort of role."
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Honduras crisis: mediator calls for Manuel Zelaya's immediate returnRumours of an imminent coup have swept through Pakistan since an angry confrontation between the unpopular president and the army chief earlier this week. Gen Ashfaq Kayani, the hand-picked successor of Gen Musharraf, criticised President Asif Ali Zardari and Yusuf Gilani, the prime minister, for the government's response to the floods that devastated the country in July, leaving at least 2,000 dead and millions displaced.
Gen Musharraf said the circumstances that forced him to launch a coup against the civilian government in 1999 had re-emerged.
"In that one year, Pakistan was going down and a number of people, including politicians, women, men came to me, telling me 'Why are you not acting? Are you going to act for Pakistan's good?'
"You see the photographs of the meeting with the president and the prime minister and I can assure you they were not discussing the weather," he said.
"There was a serious discussion of some kind or other and certainly at this moment all kinds of pressures must be on this army chief."
The 67-year-old former president, who was forced out of office in 2008, will launch the All Pakistan Muslim League, in Whitehall on Friday as he looks to contest the next elections in 2013 as a civilian.
Mr Gilani said Gen Musharraf would face trial in front of Pakistan's supreme court on corruption charges if he returned to Pakistan from his London exile.
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