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Musharraf is sunk: Imran

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July 31, 2007 18:32 IST

Imran Khan, Pakistan's cricketer-turned-politician, has said that President Pervez Musharraf is "sunk" as he has "lost touch" with the people and must resign.

"It is all over for him. He is sunk", Khan said, adding, "It is a crisis of his own making and the accumulative effect of his miscalculations.

"The longer Musharraf stays, the longer the backlash of extremism will last. The majority of Pakistanis, secular minded or not, view Musharraf as an American puppet," Khan told The Daily Telegraph.

Years of internal discord over the country's support for the US-led war on terror came to a head earlier this month with a commando assault on Islamabad's radical Lal Masjid. Since then a series of suicide bombs by Islamic extremists has claimed lives of more than 200 people.

The report said Benazir Bhutto, the former prime minister who lives in self-imposed exile and whose previous governments were both dismissed amid charges of corruption, may now agree to a power-sharing deal with Musharraf.

"For him to go looking in desperation for a compromise with Benazir is the ultimate humiliation for a man who spent millions of dollars trying to have her convicted," said Khan, a contemporary of Bhutto at Oxford University.

The former Pakistan cricket captain argued that if Musharraf tried to impose martial law or attempted to have himself re-elected ahead of next year's general elections, he would be challenged in the supreme court.

Khan, chief of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf party (The Pakistani Justice Movement), described as a defining moment for Pakistan the apex court's ruling last week to reinstate the country's chief justice, who had earlier been sacked by Musharraf.

Khan warned that the achievement of having an emboldened judiciary could soon be lost if Bhutto struck a deal with the military ruler.

"Benazir is going to negate everything to get off her corruption charges and the army will still be in power," Khan said.

"Her father, Zulfiqar, a former president, was hanged by a military ruler. How can she do a deal with one?" Khan has accused the Muttahida Qaumi Movement -- Musharraf's political allies who govern Sind province - of being behind the violence in Karachi in which at least 40 people were killed. He has since submitted evidence to Scotland Yard in the hope that it will investigate Altaf Hussain, the MQM leader who currently lives in London.

"I received three or four death threats only hours after making the first statement," Khan told The Daily Telegraph.

Khan's party holds only one seat in the national assembly, and he remains a minnow among the political and military bigwigs who have dominated Pakistan for the past two decades. At present he is considering a possible alliance with the Pakistan Muslim League party of Nawaz Sharif, a former prime minister who was ousted by Musharraf in a bloodless coup in 1999.
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