U.S. lawmakers urging Musharraf to step down

The embattled Pakistani president won praises from his U.S. ally.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Three senators who met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf after opposition parties won a governing majority last week urged a “graceful exit” from power for the close Bush terror-fighting ally.

“Were I their political adviser, that’s what I would advise,” Sen. Joe Biden, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said Sunday. He did not favor an attempt by that new coalition to impeach Musharraf; the parties have enough seats to govern but not enough to impeach the president.

“I firmly believe if they do not focus on old grudges — and there’s plenty in Pakistan — and give him a graceful way to move,” then it could happen, said Biden, D-Del.

Also endorsing a negotiated exit rather than a push from power was Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas.

She advised the incoming government not to be “heavy-handed or ham-handed. I think that Musharraf knows what the election results were. I think that he and they agree that a secular vote was won, that the extremists were repudiated everywhere, even in their so-called strongholds. So there is a way that they could come together,” Hutchison said.

Just on Friday, Hutchison and Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, met with Musharraf and expressed their appreciation for “the president’s leadership and Pakistan’s role in the fight against terrorism,” according to Pakistan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

In addition, National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell on Sunday praised Musharraf as “our best partner” in fighting terrorists. “We have been able to kill or capture more of the al-Qaida leadership in partnership with Pakistan than anyone else.”

After an election in which the victors were secular political parties and Islamic hard-liners fared badly, McConnell said he was optimistic “we’ll be able to figure out how to work with the Pakistani government going forward and be more effective than we have been in the past.”

Biden, joined by Sens. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., saw Musharraf on the morning after the election.

The senators also met with Asif Ali Zadari of the Pakistan People’s Party and Nawaz Sharif of the Pakistan Muslim League-N. Together, those parties won at least 154 of the 268 contested seats in the National Assembly. Musharraf’s ruling party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q, won only 40 seats. Pakistan’s Election Commission has yet to declare winners of six seats.

Opposition leaders fear that Musharraf, who as president has the authority to dissolve parliament, might do that and call new elections if Pakistani lawmakers take actions he opposes.