General Musharraf to continue for five more years
Dated 10/4/2006
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New Delhi: A top Pakistani minister has said President Musharraf will remain in office for five years after the 2007 elections. "President Pervez Musharraf would continue to hold the country's top post even after the 2007 general elections," said Pakistani Information Minister Sheikh Rashid Ahmed.
Ahmed said Musharraf would decide at a later date whether to get re-elected by the current national and provincial assemblies or by the new bodies to be formed after the polls.
"Mr. Musharraf was constitutionally elected as President after 2002 general elections by the national and four provincial assemblies," Ahmed said.
The Asian Age newspaper said Monday Ahmed defended Musharraf's simultaneous occupation of the offices of president and chief of the army.
"A uniformed president is imperative for the country, as enemies of the nation are engaged in nefarious designs," Ahmed said.
The information minister's comments came two days after Parliamentary Affairs Minister Sher Afghan Niazi announced that polls for the national and provincial assemblies would be held in February 2008, rather than 2007 as had been expected.
Meanwhile, exiled former Pakistani Premier Benazir Bhutto has charged that three Pakistani companies paid more than $4 million to Saddam Hussein's regime under the controversial United Nations' oil-for-food program to win oil contracts.
Two days prior to the allegations, the Pakistani establishment had alleged that while chairperson of the national accountability bureau, Bhutto had given a $2 million commission to the Hussein regime to win contracts worth $11 million through two Sharjah-based companies she registered in 2000 and 2001.
