Amir Mir

Lahore: The PPP government in Pakistan has succeeded in getting a go ahead from the Bush administration to remove President Pervez Musharraf form his office, highly placed diplomatic sources say.

The sources say having had enough of his wont to run with the hares & hunt with the hounds, the Bush administration has finally agreed to dump Musharraf. They added that US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, along with a delegation of Democratic Senators, is coming to Pakistan within the next three days to meet Musharraf.

They added that Negroponte is coming with a message from Bush, giving a time frame to Musharraf to quit his office and pave the way for Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the senior vice chairman of the PPP. The sources said Zardari has already conveyed the June 10 deadline to Musharraf to tender his resignation or face impeachment proceedings.

All members of the PPL have given a clear message to Zardari to get rid of the dictator.

Zardari told the CEC members that Musharraf did not want to hand over powers to Parliament. The sources added that the warning by Zardari that Musharraf should step down voluntarily clearly indicated that the mists that have shrouded power politics in Pakistan.

Zardari, who stood accused of aligning his party with the presidency, has finally broken decisively free of the stifling presidential embrace, declaring the other day that Musharraf should read the writing on the wall and succumb to the will of the people by surrendering all the powers of the prime minister which were originally vested in the prime minister.

“We intend to walk him away, rather than impeach him away. We have never accepted Musharraf as the constitutional president of the country and we will decide his fate with the backing of the parliament”, Asif Zardari said.

The parliamentary strength of the anti-Musharraf forces is enough to impeach the president in a joint sitting of the parliament.

As far as the numbers game is concerned, the treasury and its supporters in the National Assembly and the Senate collectively make a total of more than 295 members, a constitutionally-required number to impeach the sitting president.

Source : DNA