ISLAMABAD, March 30: President Gen Pervez Musharraf will take a decision on the question of whether to hold a referendum to give himself an additional five-year term in office, by the end of next week.

If the decision is in favour of holding the referendum, which appears to be a foregone conclusion, it will take place one month from the date of announcement of the decision.

“This is what the Chief Election Commissioner has advised us on the matter of timing of holding the referendum,” the President said while talking to some 38 senior journalists, including editors and columnists.

He said he would continue to hold his office of the COAS even after having been legitimized as President through a nationwide referendum.

Gen Musharraf also made it clear that while he believed he had initiated the process of restoring ‘genuine’ democracy in the country by putting in place the local government system at the grassroots, he would still like to keep the democratically-elected Parliament under check through the unelected National Security Council.

This, he said, was necessary to keep the holders of the three offices, the President, the Prime Minister and the Chief of the Army Staff, from overshooting their powers.

“There have been instances in the past when the Presidents and Prime Ministers have tried to undermine each other to create more political rooms for themselves and in the process have damaged the democratic process and there were COASs in the past who took over the reins of the country on whimsical grounds,” the President explained.

He, however, hastened to add that the elected prime minister would not be hampered in his executive functions. “He would be the all powerful chief executive and neither the President, nor the COAS would be allowed to interfere with his responsibilities,” the President added.

The President said if he opted for referendum, he would ask a direct question — Do you want me to continue or not as President for the next five years? — prefaced with a preamble in which all the reforms he had so far introduced and the ones yet to be introduced would be mentioned and the pros and cons of continuity explained.

He plans to allow Pakistanis who have attained the age of 18 to cast their vote in the referendum and is also considering setting up as many polling booths as possible in order to save the voters from the inconvenience of travelling far for casting their votes.

During the course of the discussion, the President also made it clear that neither Nawaz Sharif nor Benazir would be allowed to comeback to power.

“Since he has no role in Pakistani politics I do not recognize the Muslim League which carries his initial, and I recognize only one PML,” he said, explaining why he would not consult the PML(N) on the referendum issue.

He did not use the same argument in the case of PPP and said he would soon consult that party as he recognized it as one of the two major political parties in the country, though he insisted he would not let Benazir Bhutto to comeback to power and plunder, as he put it, “the 5.3 billion dollars in the foreign exchange reserve kitty”.

His willingness to recognize the PPP while wanting to keep Benazir Bhutto out of reckoning in any future power setup, reflected the President’s dilemma as refusal to recognize the PPP as well along with PML(N) would render his efforts to restore democracy and transfer power to the elected representatives of the people totally meaningless. And if he recognized PML(N) as well then the PML(QA) would certainly disintegrate automatically without any effort from anybody.

Gen Musharraf said almost all the political parties whom he had so far consulted have endorsed his idea of holding referendum. He assured his audience that he was neither creating a King’s Party nor was he planning to takeover a party.

The President said he would personally go to the people once the decision to hold the referendum is taken and mobilize them in favour of an affirmative vote conceding, however, that the whole exercise entailed a lot of risk.

“But I take calculated risks and that is what I would do and as you know, ‘no risk, no game!” he added.

He said full political activities would not be allowed during the referendum, “but politicians would be welcome to hold indoor meetings and express their opinion on live TV shows.”

He did not say if he confined the political parties to hold indoor meetings and participate in TV talk shows only what mode of public contact would he himself use for mobilizing the masses for a ‘yes’ vote in the referendum.

The President appeared completely convinced that the country needed him for five more years and also that he was very popular among the masses and said: “I would be very disappointed, if they cast a negative vote in the referendum.”

In his opening remarks, Gen Musharraf said with the October elections so near, the country had entered into a political phase and his government was now faced with new challenges.

He admitted that three years were not sufficient for all the reforms that he had wanted to introduce in the country. “There are thousands of problems facing this country and as some say it is the most difficult country to rule in the world,” he added.

This, the President said, did not mean that he wanted to stay in power for more than five years. “We have already successfully initiated the process of setting up real democracy in the country and given a direction to the economy.”

However, in order to sustain the process already initiated, he said, some essential steps were needed to be taken, the most important being the required constitutional amendments to introduce checks and balance between the power brokers and bring about provincial harmony.

The President appeared rather unhappy with those journalists who were attempting to equate him with Ayub Khan and Gen Zia, and said his referendum would be totally different from those which were held by Gen Ayub and Gen Ziaul Haq.

He called those who were only seeing the darker side of the referendum as ‘pessimists, despondent people’ and said he himself was an optimist.

In his opinion once he had the mandate from the people he would have an upper hand over the elected Parliament and “they would not be able to blackmail me as they did to Gen Zia.”

Gen Musharraf agreed with a questioner that he would still have to get his referendum and his amendments indemnified from the elected Parliament but thought that the elected representatives would not be able to go against the wishes of the people at large who had voted for continuity in the referendum.

The President also seemed to have been influenced in his decision to consider holding a referendum for continuity by the foreign investors who according to him keep asking him for guarantees that his reforms would not be overturned by the next elected government.

To a question, he said no foreign government was opposing his idea of referendum. “As a matter of fact most of them have welcomed it.”

The President also rejected the perception of some that he had sold out to the US. “Look, the US had also put pressure on us to hand over the persons named by India in its list of 20, but I did not and then the US had wanted us to extradite Omar, but I did not, I am going to hold his trial inside the country and punish him for the crime he has committed in the country.”

Gen Musharraf also explained what the Foreign Minister, Abdul Sattar, had actually said about the US troops crossing over to Pakistan in pursuit of the Taliban and Al Qaeda members. He said: “What the foreign minister had actually said was that the US has so far not made any such request and if they made such a request then we will resolve it.” This, he said, was misconstrued by some to mean that Pakistan has already given okay to the US troops in Afghanistan to cross over to Pakistan in hot pursuit.

Adding, he said, there was no reason why the US troops should enter Pakistan and it would be neither in their own interest nor in our interest for them to do so.

The President also clarified the reports of FBI personnel assisting Pakistani law enforcement agencies in raiding and capturing 52 terrorists in three Pakistani cities earlier this week.

“The only assistance that the FBI gave us was technical. They pointed out to us the houses in which these terrorists were hiding. The rest was done by our police and they did not do a very good job of it,” he added.