Zardari says he will become prime minister ‘if needed’

ISLAMABAD — Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari has said that the ‘Establishment’ that brought Gen. Pervez Musharraf to power was now involved in ‘palace intrigues’ against the new democratic government.
‘The same forces’ had asked Benazir Bhutto to boycott the 2007 elections, he said.
“When she refused to do so, they threatened to restrict her to the province of Sindh,” Zardari said in an interview with foreign urdu service.
He said he would contest the June 3 by-elections and might assume the office of prime minister ‘if needed’. Zardari was persistently questioned if he could guarantee that he would not become the prime minister.
He refused and said he would assume the office if it were needed.
He said people had voted for the new government so that it would change the system and the coalition was committed to this.
The PPP co-chairman said the government will restore all judges sacked on November 3.
He said a constitutional judicial reforms package was also likely to be moved in parliament. He said he wanted to strengthen the judiciary so that it would not succumb to the executive’s pressure.
Zardari said the foreign minister would formally write to the United Nations within two weeks to ask for a UN-led probe into Benazir’s killing. He said his sister Faryal Talpur and he would file nomination papers for the by-elections from the National Assembly seat Benazir contested from.
He said Benazir Bhutto had not nominated him, but his sister Faryal Talpur, as the guardian of her children in her will.
Agencies add: Zardari said the new government is avoiding a showdown with President Pervez Musharraf for now because it lacks the support needed to impeach him.
He said the new government would only confront the president if it can muster the two-thirds majority in parliament needed to impeach him.
“The parliament and the president have a formal relationship. For the time being, we are not breaking up that status quo. We don’t have that power,” Zardari added.
“For the sake of the country, we don’t want confrontation. But this doesn’t mean we accept him (Musharraf). If we get the two-thirds majority we will think about making him accountable,” Zardari said.
In this context, he noted that Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had secured a confidence vote by more than a two-thirds majority “but some members might not vote for the president’s accountability”.
According to Zardari, the people had voted for a new dispensation in the general elections that had seen a coalition comprising the PPP and the PML-N come to power and that the new government was committed to taking the process forward.
“People have voted for us to bring about change ... changing the system. We will bring change, but its timing depends on circumstances,” he added.
On the coalition’s relations with Musharraf, Zardari said the status quo would be maintained.
Zardari also brushed aside suggestions of a love-hate relationship with the president, saying he neither loved nor hated Musharraf.
The coalition partners, he said, were sitting in an assembly that was not the president’s ‘personal fief’ but ‘their own assembly’. Musharraf too had a role to play in the new set-up and ‘we want to maintain the status quo’.
Asked whether he and his party had accepted Musharraf because of political expediency, Zardari replied: “No. We have done so because of our wish to get the requisite political support.”