Media reports from Pakistan say the government has finalised a plan to impose emergency in the country.
Geo TV, a private news channel, reports President General Pervez Musharraf has decided to declare emergency for a month and could extended it for three months.
Musharraf, at a meeting of his top aides on Wednesday, reviewed the political situation in the country and the options he had to remain in power.
Tariq Azim, Minister of State for Information, told Geo TV in an interview that emergency could not be ruled out. "Both internal and external threats are such that you cannot rule out anything. At the moment there is no emergency. We have said that options are available with the government," Azim said.
''I cannot say that it will be tonight, tomorrow or later. We hope that it does not happen. But we are going through difficult circumstances so the possibility of an emergency cannot be ruled out,'' he told The Associated Press.
Geo TV reports Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, president of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League (Q), told women MPs at a reception that the government is likely to declare emergency.
Chaudhury Amir Hussain, Speaker of the National Assembly, was a guest at the reception and was reportedly consulted on how emergency could get the National Assembly’s approval.
Pakistan’s Attorney General Malik Qayyum told CNN-IBN the government would have consulted him if it planned to impose emergency and the matter had not been discussed when he met Musharraf in the morning.
Qayyum said in “normal circumstances” he would have been in the know-how of these developments.
Rumours across Pakistan
Wajahat Khan, a senior journalist with the Dawn newspaper, said Musharraf’s last-minute decision to not attend a traditional council (jirga) of Afghan and Pakistani leaders on Wednesday had sparked rumours that the government was about to declare emergency.
