Pakistan won’t call state of emergency

President Pervez Musharraf decided Thursday against declaring a state of emergency, hours after senior officials in his government said such a step was under consideration.

Such a decree would have given the Pakistani leader, who faces plummeting popularity and the worst political troubles of his eight-year rule, sweeping powers to suppress dissent, muzzle the media and put off elections.

Some analysts speculated that Musharraf’s aides had leaked talk of an emergency to gauge international and domestic reaction to the prospect of authoritarian rule in Pakistan, which is considered an essential, if problematic, U.S. ally in the war against Islamic insurgents in Afghanistan.

In some ways, response to the news was worse than the president might have feared. There were the expected expressions of alarm and discomfit from human rights groups, the Bush administration and opposition parties, but also a distinct undertone of derision.

One newspaper carried the headline, “My Dear Countrymen. . .” in mocking reference to the formulaic start of pronouncements of martial law and other speeches in coup-prone Pakistan. Some commentators said that even considering a state of emergency was a sign of desperation on the part of the president, an army general who seized power in a coup in 1999.

“It’s like a gambler trying one last roll of the dice,” said Ayaz Amir, an analyst and commentator for the Dawn newspaper. “He wants everything his own way, and he doesn’t want to give up anything. It’s an impossible situation.”

Musharraf’s aides have said he wants to have himself approved in the next six weeks for a five-year term as president by the outgoing parliament and provincial assemblies, which are considered likely to bend to his wishes. He also wants to retain his position as chief of Pakistan’s powerful military, which he had promised to give up.

Constitutional challenges to this plan are all but certain, and Pakistan’s Supreme Court has been greatly emboldened by its chief justice’s successful resistance to Musharraf’s efforts to remove him.

The president had suspended Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry on charges of misconduct. But the move backfired badly, triggering a massive grass-roots democracy movement whose leaders are demanding that Musharraf renounce his army role and allow free and fair elections.

The Pakistani leader is also under pressure as Islamic militants step up attacks in revenge for last month’s storming of a radical mosque in Islamabad, the capital, by government forces.

The insurgents have staged suicide bombings and other attacks in cities throughout Pakistan and have battled government troops in the tribal lands along the border with Afghanistan.

This violence was cited by some of Musharraf’s senior associates as potentially warranting the imposition of an emergency. But legal experts said the level of violence did not appear to meet the criteria specified in the constitution for the government’s assumption of such powers, which are to be reserved for times of war or domestic disturbances so severe that the authorities cannot maintain order.

Musharraf arrived at the same conclusion after consultations with advisors and Cabinet members, a senior aide said.

“In the president’s view, there is no need at present to impose an emergency,” Information Minister Mohammed Ali Durrani said in a statement.

Durrani said Musharraf was “under pressure from different political parties” to declare emergency rule, but he did not name them. He added that the president “believes in holding free and fair elections and is not in favor of any step which hinders that.”

Parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place by early next year.

Exiled rivals, including two former prime ministers, Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, have pledged to return to run in those elections, although Bhutto has been in talks with Musharraf about a power-sharing deal.

The flurry of anxiety over the potential imposition of emergency rule began Wednesday when Musharraf suddenly canceled his long-scheduled appearance today at a gathering of hundreds of Afghan and Pakistani tribal leaders in Kabul, the Afghan capital. He sent his prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, instead.

One of the key aims of that traditional council, or jirga, is to improve Afghan and Pakistani cooperation to root out militants in the tribal areas.

The Bush administration has been pressuring Musharraf to take stronger action against Al Qaeda and Taliban militants believed to be sheltering on the Pakistani side of the border, and declined this week to say whether the United States would act on its own if Pakistan’s offensive was considered ineffective.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai told the tribal leaders that militants were sowing misery among ordinary citizens.

“Afghan people are dying daily, our schools are burning, our mullahs are dying,” said Karzai, just back from a visit to the United States for consultations with President Bush.

The jirga is being boycotted by tribal elders from North and South Waziristan, Pakistan’s two most volatile tribal areas. Some said they declined to attend because they did not believe in the gathering’s aims, but others said they were intimidated by local insurgents.

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laura.king@latimes.com

Special correspondent M. Karim Faiez in Kabul contributed to this report.