ISLAMABAD, Aug 16: The heads of the ruling coalition are expected to meet early next week to give a go-ahead to their plan to impeach President Pervez Musharraf amid indications that efforts to persuade the president to resign have slackened due to his insistence to do so only after going through the charge-sheet against him.

Sources in the ruling Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) told Dawn that party co-chairman Asif Zardari would meet PML-N chief Nawaz Sharif and heads of other coalition partners over the next three days to finalise the charge-sheet and to give final touches to the impeachment plan.

Top legal aides to President Musharraf said on Saturday that he had so far ignored all advices of his friends and legal aides to resign.

“During the meeting with me the president spoke his mind that he is not considering (the option) to resign,” said one of the legal aides advising him on a regular basis.

He said the president had been told in clear terms that he had no option but to resign or face impeachment charges.

In addition to some political bigwigs, Mr Musharraf has been conferring with constitutional experts like Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, Abdul Hafeez Pirzada and Attorney General Malik Mohammad Qayyum to explore legal possibilities like invoking Article 58-2(b) to dismiss the National Assembly or approach the Supreme Court to challenge the charge-sheet.

“The president has been told that being constitutional bodies both the Supreme Court as well as the parliament cannot interfere in each other’s affairs and the apex court cannot impede the latter from impeaching him,” the lawyer who met the president on Friday evening told Dawn.

A number of PPP leaders on Saturday urged the president to “see the writing on the wall” and quit the office immediately after passage of the resolutions against him in all the four provincial assemblies.

Foreign Minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi, while talking to reporters, asked President Musharraf to resign within two days, before submission of a final impeachment notice.

Information Minister Sherry Rehman said that the government would follow the constitution and law of the land during the impeachment process and the president would be given a right to defend himself.

The Leader of the House in the Senate, Raza Rabbani, said the ruling coalition did not want to bulldoze the process and the president would be given an ample time to respond to the charge-sheet against him. He, however, declined to say explicitly as to how many days the president would be given for a reply.

Sources in the PPP told Dawn that the party wanted that the president should leave the country after submitting his resignation or impeachment as his presence in the country could create problems for the government.

They said there could be any unforeseen development in case the president was allowed to stay in the country. A key PPP leader, who has a key role in the impeachment process, went on to say that perhaps the government would have to keep him (President Musharraf) under protective custody or house arrest to provide him foolproof security if he decided to stay in the country. He claimed that the coalition parties had readied a plan to meet any possible action from the president.

“We have already finalised the place where the members of parliament would hold the session if the president took an extreme step of using his powers to dissolve the assembly under Article 58-2(b).”

Meanwhile, PPP co-chairperson Asif Ali Zardari has started consultations on the charge-sheet against President Musharraf with the coalition partners. JUI leader Maulana Fazlur Rehman met Mr Zardari on Saturday and discussed the charge-sheet.

AFP adds: Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief dashed to Pakistan on Friday for talks with the government over its plans to impeach President Pervez Musharraf, a senior official in Islamabad said.

“Yes, Saudi intelligence chief Prince Muqrin bin Abdul Aziz did visit Pakistan and met senior government officials,” a senior coalition official said on Saturday.

“The main purpose of the visit was to find an amicable solution to the (impeachment) issue and that no one should become a laughing stock,” the official said.

Asked what solution the coalition regarded as acceptable, the official said that “Musharraf should step down”, but that it was “really up to Musharraf” if his plans included exile to Saudi Arabia.