US not looking at post-Musharraf phase: Rice

Amid rumours of a coup in Pakistan in a section of media while President Pervez Musharraf was in the US, the Bush administration has said that it was not looking at a post-Musharraf phase in that country.

The President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf, in Rice's view, has changed the orientation of the country"dramatically" in the aftermath of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001, and is determined to root out extremism.

"I don't think you can even speculate and I think we're not looking to a post-Musharraf Pakistan," Rice said in an interview to The New York Post when asked if the administration had started thinking of the era beyond Musharraf given the rumours over the weekend.

"We've got in Pakistan, in this particular leader, somebody who changed Pakistan's orientation dramatically after September 11th, who has tried in domestic terms to root out some of the extremism that came into Pakistan essentially after the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan... who is a good ally in the war on terror," Rice said in a transcript released in Washington.

"And I think the future of Pakistan, as Musharraf and his people fully understand, is to de-radicalise elements of the population that were radicalised by the Afghan experience. It's why education reform is very important in Pakistan. It's why economic growth is extremely important in Pakistan. And he's called it enlightened moderation. I think getting a Pakistan that moves away from the course that it was prior to September 11 is enormously important," Rice said.