Musharraf says he will resign Pakistan presidency

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan -- Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced his resignation Monday after weeks of pressure on him to relinquish power.

Musharraf told the nation in a televised address that he would step down -- nearly nine years after he seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999.

It was unclear what the future would hold for Musharraf.
He quit just as the ruling party was taking steps to remove him in what would have been the first impeachment of a president in Pakistan's history.

Local media reports said Musharraf has been granted "safe passage" out of the country. A spokeswoman for the ruling Pakistan People's Party, which has taken steps to impeach Musharraf, did not rule out that possibility.

"The decision to give a safe passage to the president is on discretion of the coalition leadership," Sherry Rehman told reporters Sunday.

Until now, Musharraf, 65, had stubbornly resisted pressure to resign. But his once-considerable power had eroded significantly since parties opposed to his rule swept to victory in parliamentary elections in February.

Musharraf spent a considerable chunk of his speech delivering a state-of-the-union style list of Pakistan's "accomplishments" under his rule. He contrasted it with what he called the deteriorating economic situation now.

"After the elections, the nation wanted solutions from the new government," he said. "But the politicians could not do so. A personal vendetta was started."

The ruling coalition ratcheted up its attempts last week to force Musharraf to step down or face impeachment.
A coalition committee spent all last week compiling a list of charges against Musharraf, including corruption, economic mismanagement and violating the constitution.

Pakistan's four provincial assemblies called on the president to give up power. Parliament was expected to consider an impeachment motion Monday or Tuesday.

"I think the people have mixed reviews to the news," said Faisal Kapadia, a commodities trader in the city of Karachi. "Leading Pakistan is not an easy task, and anyone doing it comes under a lot of criticism.

"In the start, most Pakistanis were for him," Kapadia said. "And he still has some supporters -- especially because the new government, which promised to do things differently, has failed to do much in the past 100 days in power."

A dramatic turn of events led Musharraf to power in 1999.

He was serving as military chief when then-Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif dismissed him, setting off a confrontation between the two men.

As Musharraf was returning from an overseas visit in October 1999, Sharif refused to allow the commercial airliner, with 200 passengers on board, to land.

Within hours, the army had deposed Sharif in a bloodless coup and the plane was allowed to touch down. By then, it had less than 10 minutes of fuel left.

Musharraf assumed control of the government, and a nation on the brink of economic ruins welcomed him with open arms.

"I think at this point, his intentions were good," said Lt. Gen. Talat Masood, a political analyst. "He wanted to serve the country and to be different."

During his rule, Pakistan attained respectable growth rates and established a generally favorable investment climate.

Along with that came a growing middle class, a more aggressive media, and a more assertive judiciary in this country of 164 million -- the second most populous Muslim nation after Indonesia.

"He brought parliamentary reforms. He brought women into the parliament," said Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, director of the Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency.

But Musharraf never lost his military mindset.

"He in a way, always believed in a unity of command, a very centralized command, which means his command, in fact," said Masood.

After the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in the United States, Musharraf found himself on the frontlines of America's 'war on terror.'

Pakistan had long supported the Taliban as it battled the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.
But after the 2001 attacks, Musharraf aligned himself with the United States to help rout the fundamentalist Islamic movement.


Washington poured billions of dollars in aid as Musharraf vowed to deprive the militants of the sanctuary they have established along the country's rugged border with Afghanistan.

He cast himself as indispensable -- to the West and to Pakistan, analysts said.

To Pakistanis, he made himself out to be the man who could deliver peace with neighboring India, a country with which Pakistan has fought three wars. To the West, he presented himself as someone who could safeguard the country's nuclear arsenal.

Yet Musharraf's popularity began to plummet last year.

In March 2007, he suspended Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, accusing him of misusing his powers.

The move triggered countrywide protests and accusations that the leader was trying to influence the Supreme Court's ruling on whether he could run for another five-year term under Pakistan's constitution.

Chaudhry was reinstated but the damage was done for Musharraf politically.

"Undoubtedly, that was the catalyst," Masood said. "This is where he went wrong, and he underestimated the value of democracy."

Four months later, in July 2007, Pakistani security forces seized the Red Mosque in the capital city Islamabad.

The raid was intended to rout Islamic extremists who hoped to establish a Taliban-style rule across the capital. It killed more than one hundred people.

In retaliation, suicide bombers launched one deadly strike after another, targeting civilians, police and security forces.

In October, Musharraf was re-elected president by a parliament that critics contend was stacked with his supporters. Opposition parties filed a challenge.

The next month, he declared a state of emergency, suspended Pakistan's constitution, replaced the chief judge again and blacked out independent TV outlets.

Musharraf said he did so to stabilize the country and that he needed the tools to fight rising Islamic extremism. The action drew sharp criticism from the United States and democracy advocates.

Pakistanis openly called for his ouster.

Under pressure from the West, he later lifted the emergency and promised elections in January.

He allowed Sharif, the prime minister he deposed, to return from exile. He also let in another political foe, Benazir Bhutto. She, too, had been a prime minister, and led the Pakistan People's Party.

However, in December, the country was plunged into further turmoil when an assailant killed Bhutto at a rally in Rawalpindi, a closely guarded city that is home to the country's military headquarters.

Musharraf's government and the CIA contend the killing was orchestrated by Baitullah Mehsud, a leader of the Pakistani Taliban with ties to al Qaeda. But nationwide polls found that a majority of Pakistanis believe Musharraf's government was complicit in the assassination.

Bhutto's supporters took to the streets. The ensuing violence caused damage of more than $200 million (12 billion Pakistani rupees) and killed at least 58 people, government officials said.

Meanwhile, several other factors compounded Musharraf's declining popularity: a shortage of essential food items, power cuts, and a skyrocketing inflation.

And once parliamentary elections came around in February, voters overwhelmingly expressed their dissatisfaction with Musharraf by handing victory to the Pakistan People's Party and others opposed to the president.

"There were things he did right, but the method was all wrong," Mehboob, the analyst, said.

For five month, the new ruling coalition was divided on what to do about Musharraf.

On August 7, it decided he had to go.

And in the end, Musharraf, the man who survived three assassination