Pakistan Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani invoked the names of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his British counterpart to assert that he calls the shots in Islamabad and not embattled President Pervez Musharraf.
Gilani was asked at a gathering during his three-day US visit if the continuance of the former military ruler as head of state was sustainable under a democratic framework.
Drawing a distinction between the presidential and parliamentary forms of government, Gilani cautioned against looking at Musharraf in an American context.
"You can compare me with Gordon Brown,
the prime minister of the United Kingdom and Manmohan Singh who is the prime minister of India. We have inherited the Westminster system of parliamentary government where the chief executive is the prime minister, not the president," Gilani said at the function organised by the Council on Foreign Relations and the Middle East Institute.
At one point Gilani also remarked that India and Pakistan come from the same culture and ethos with parliamentary forms of government. "Here (in Pakistan) there have been a lot of interference from the army, by the dictators," Gilani added.