ISLAMABAD, Nov 10 The government assured the National Assembly on Tuesday it would execute any court warrants against ex-president Pervez Musharraf as the former military dictator came under fire from both sides of the house, though the treasury benches ignored an opposition call to reply to his latest criticism of President Asif Ali Zardari.

Opposition leader Chaudhry Nisar Ali Khan was cheered by desk-thumping from both opposition and treasury benches as he lambasted Mr Musharraf for “using such (insulting) words against the elected president of Pakistan” and, while demanding a government response to it, repeated his Pakistan Muslim League-N's demand for a high treason trial of the former army chief for his violations of the Constitution.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Babar Awan dismissed the retired general's remarks about President Zardari in an interview to an American journalist that appeared in The New Yorker magazine as “non-serious” and “unworthy of a reply”, but predicted that the “divine rope” could be tightening for the former president, saying “That is about to come.”

And then he said “If a Pakistani court issues any proclamation, warrant or red warrant (against the former president) we will not become an obstruction in its way. Rather we will execute it. This is my commitment to the house.”

The minister did not refer to any case in which such a warrant could be issued against the retired general, who ruled Pakistan for about nine years after seizing power in an Oct 12, 1999, coup that toppled then prime minister Nawaz Sharif and resigned as president on Aug 18, 2008, to escape a threatened impeachment by parliament.

But at least two first information reports have been registered with police against General Musharraf — one in Dera Bugti for allegedly ordering the killing of Baloch leader Akbar Khan Bugti in his cave hideout in a 2006 military operation and another in Islamabad for keeping judges of superior courts under house arrest after his extra-constitutional emergency proclamation of Nov 3, 2008.

The PML-N wants General Musharraf tried under Article 6 of the Constitution for high reason, which is punishable with death, for imposing the Nov 3 emergency and suspending the Constitution in his capacity as the army chief.

Chaudhry Nisar regretted that even two days after reports of Musharraf's interview with journalist Seyour Hersh appeared in local newspapers, nobody from the government came forward to respond to the insulting remarks, which described the president as a “criminal”, a “fraud” and a “third-rater”.

He said that despite his own serious reservations about Mr Zardari, “we cannot allow a man who attacked the country's Constitution and used army as mafia ... to use such words against the elected president of Pakistan”.

The opposition leader said he would like the government -- particularly Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani -- to take the house into confidence in the next three to four days before its prorogation about power cuts, sugar crisis, the fate of criminal cases likely to be revived after the demise of controversial National Reconciliation Ordinance and the fate of a new accountability law to replace the notorious National Accountability Bureau.

In a reference to disputed charges brought against Mr Zardari in the 1990s and withdrawn under the NRO, the parliamentary affairs minister said the PPP was neither afraid of the cases in the past nor it would be in the future so long as proceedings were transparent.

He also assured the house that he would talk to the prime minister and Interior Minister Rehman Malik about Chaudhry Nisar's demand for a government explanation on the shooting to death of a suspected would-be suicide bomber near a police checkpoint in Islamabad on Sunday night, after fears were voiced in press reports that it could have been a managed shootout.

Mr Awan said the government could not countenance any extra-judicial killing and added that the interior minister was likely to explain the incident on Wednesday, when the house will meet at 4pm.