Musharraf says Pakistan is no "banana republic"

Islamabad, Sept 25: Scoffing at rumours that he had been overthrown in a coup while visiting the United States, President Pervez Musharraf said Pakistan was not an unstable ''banana republic''.

Independent television channel Geo News today showed the president smiling and laughing with journalists in the United States as he scotched speculation that he had been toppled.

''It is a nonsense. What should I say about this? Look we aren't, thank God, a banana republic, where such things happen suddenly,'' said Musharraf, who came to power himself in a bloodless military coup seven years ago.

The rumours swept Pakistan yesterday during a power outage that blacked out large parts of the country, including the capital Islamabad, the neighbouring garrison city of Rawalpindi and eastern city of Lahore.

''I've been told the power breakdown was in Ghazi Barotha, and these rumours surfaced due to this. As if a power breakdown is needed to create such disturbance?'' Musharraf joked, as he stood alongside his wife.

Newspaper offices and journalists were flooded with telephone calls and text messages inquiring about the rumours, eventually forcing Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani, who was travelling with Musharraf, to issue a denial.

The Pakistani leader was due to launch his autobiography ''In the Line of Fire'' in New York later today, and he is scheduled to meet President George W. Bush and Afghan President Hamid Karzai later this week to discuss their sometimes strained alliance in the war on terrorism.

Musharraf is due to arrive back in Pakistan on Thursday, having been out of the country for two and a half weeks.

Last week, Thaksin Shinawatra was ousted as Thai prime minister while attending the United Nations General Assembly in New York, which Musharraf also attended.

Musharraf had a routine medical check-up in Texas with a Pakistani-American doctor over the weekend.

''They have declared me very fit,'' state-run Associated Press of Pakistan quoted the president, an ex-commando, as saying.

Musharraf has survived several assassination attempts since withdrawing Pakistan's support for the Taliban in neighbouring Afghanistan in 2001, after the Islamist militia refused to surrender its guest, Osama bin Laden, in the wake of al Qaeda's September 11 attacks on the United States.

The Times newspaper in Britain opened a serialisation of Musharraf's memoirs today with the Pakistani leader's account of how the CIA paid his government millions of dollars for handing over to America hundreds of al-Qaeda suspects.

While fears of assassination remain, speculation about Musharraf's grip on power is seldom heard openly, as there is no overt political challenge to him.

Leaders of the mainstream opposition parties are living in exile, and while some Islamist leaders talk of toppling the president, most diplomats and analysts reckon Musharraf could only be ousted by a coup from within the military.

REUTERS

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