Islamabad: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has promulgated eight more politically significant ordinances effecting changes to his earlier amendments made to the Constitution, specially to the formation of the National Security Council (NSC) to confer a permanent role for the country's military in governance.

In all, Musharraf promulgated eight ordinances late on October 26 night, effecting changes to the legal framework (LFO) which contained, among others his controversial amendments to Constitution conferring powers in him to dismiss Parliament and formation of the NSC.

One ordinance changed the wordings of the sentence, which spoke of the frequency of the NSC meetings, changing it to "regularly" and omitting the words "within the time frame indicated by him" from the earlier ordinance.

After the amendment the clause would be read as "meetings of the National Security Council may be regularly convened by the President either in his discretion, or on the advice of the Prime Minister, or when requested by any of its member".

Another ordinance permits politicians who held the post of caretaker Prime Minister and Chief Minister to hold office again, whereas, according to the LFO, people who held these offices were barred from holding them a second time.

This clause is likely to help the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League and National Alliance leaders Miraj Khalid and Ghulam Mustafa Jatoi, Moi Quereshi and Zafarullah Khan Jamali-who is considered the PML-Q candidate for the PM's post-as they have all served as caretaker PM's in the past.

PTI