Pakistani president won't step down as army chief

KARACHI, Pakistan -- Gen. Pervez Musharraf, Pakistan's president, declared late Friday that he will not step down as army chief of staff by the end of the year, breaking a public pledge but asserting that to give up his uniform now would jeopardize the country's political and economic stability.

Musharraf had been saying for months that he was having second thoughts about the promise he made late last year to shed his uniform, but he had never explicitly revealed his intentions until an interview Friday night with a Karachi television station.

"I will remain in uniform even after Dec. 31," he said on the broadcast, adding that he would address the nation in the next few days to explain his reasoning. "I am telling you this for the first time."

Although Musharraf's decision had been widely expected, his formal declaration sets the stage for renewed confrontation with political opponents, who accused him Saturday of betraying his oft-stated commitment to restoring democracy. The army chief came to power in a bloodless military coup in October 1999.

The announcement also highlights a diplomatic challenge for the Bush administration, which has made promoting democracy in the Muslim world a top foreign policy priority but is wary of upsetting its delicate relationship with Musharraf, a moderate, secular-minded Muslim who is a key ally in the war against Islamic extremism. Military governments have ruled Pakistan for much of its 57-year history.

"Musharraf has broken a pledge with the nation, but his mentors in Washington don't care because they need such dictators all over the Muslim world," Qazi Hussain Ahmed, the head of Jamaat-e-Islami, one of Pakistan's most influential Islamic parties, said in a telephone interview from the northwestern city of Peshawar. U.S. officials have refrained from commenting on the issue, describing it as a matter for Pakistanis to decide.

During the interview Friday with the private KTN channel, Musharraf said he had decided to remain in uniform because "I don't want to weaken the democracy and economic stability in the country."

Musharraf has said on other occasions that the threat from Pakistani extremist groups may be too grave for him to give up his military portfolio and that ordinary Pakistanis had begged him to remain as army head. Islamic extremists have tried to assassinate him several times, including two attempts last December.

"I will speak to the nation in a few days and tell them some reasons, and tell them the truth," he said in the interview, a transcript of which was made available on Saturday. "We will speak of the future, where we are standing, where we came from, where we have reached and where we have to go."

Musharraf sounded a different note last Dec. 24, when he told Pakistanis in a nationally televised address that he had decided to step down as army chief of staff by the end of this year. "There comes a time in the lives of nations when important decisions must be taken," he said then. "That time has come."

Musharraf agreed to give up his uniform as part of a deal under which an alliance of hard-line religious parties in parliament agreed to support constitutional changes legitimizing his political rule through 2007 and significantly enhancing the power of the president's office.

Over the last several years, Musharraf has purged the army's top ranks of potential rivals and filled their posts with loyalists thought to share his secular, pro-Western outlook. Some analysts have suggested, however, that Musharraf would nonetheless be taking a risk by surrendering control of the army, traditionally the main power center in Pakistani politics.

Both secular and religious political opponents vowed Saturday to challenge his reversal, raising the prospect of street rallies, parliamentary walkouts and other forms of protest.

"We will not allow smooth functioning of the government if Gen. Musharraf does not remove his military uniform by Dec. 31," Ahmed, the Jamaat-e-Islami leader, told reporters. The religious alliance announced plans for a protest Sunday in Rawalpindi near the capital of Islamabad.

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