Musharraf rejects emergency

By Zeeshan Haider

ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - President Pervez Musharraf rejected calls to declare emergency powers and wants Pakistan's elections to go ahead, a spokesman said on Thursday 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 favor 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 Taliban insurgency and al Qaeda.

U.S. 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 U.S. ally since the September 11 attacks in 2001, but the Bush administration has been pressing Pakistan to act against Taliban and al Qaeda fighters hiding in tribal regions on the Afghan border.

CALL FROM RICE

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Musharraf and they discussed "the ongoing, evolving political developments in Pakistan," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack told reporters in Washington on Thursday.

A senior Bush administration official said Washington opposed any moves to declare a state of emergency.

"We are not in favor of a state of emergency and we don't think there will be a state of emergency," said the U.S. official, who spoke on condition he was not named.

Rice's top diplomat for South Asia, Richard Boucher, is due to visit Pakistan late next week on a previously scheduled trip, an official said. He declined to say whether Boucher expected to meet Musharraf.

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 Taliban and al Qaeda.