ISLAMABAD—Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf assured full support to the incoming government on Sunday, a day after the party of slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto nominated the country's next prime minister.
The Pakistan People's Party has put up Yousaf Raza Gilani, a close aide of Bhutto's and a former National Assembly speaker who Musharraf had jailed in 2001, as its candidate for prime minister.
Gilani, who was released in 2006, is expected to win with a thumping majority when the National Assembly votes on Monday, and he will be sworn in on Tuesday.
U.S. ally Musharraf, who came to power as a general following a coup in 1999, is unpopular, and politically isolated since the defeat of his allies in a February 18 parliamentary election, and has implored the incoming government to avoid confrontation as he struggles to hold onto the presidency.
"Whichever new government is formed, it will enjoy my full support," Musharraf said in a televised speech while addressing an annual military parade at a sports stadium in Islamabad.
Dressed in a white sherwani, a traditional South Asian frock coat, Musharraf attended the ceremony for the first time as a civilian to commemorate the day Muslim agitators in the Indian independence movement passed a resolution in 1940 for the country to be founded.
Musharraf stepped down as army chief last November, weakening ties with the institution that had been his greatest source of power.
"I hope that these governments will maintain political peace ... and will continue the struggle against terrorism and extremism with the same force," Musharraf said.
Pakistan has been reeling from a wave of suicide attacks and intensifying militant violence in the nine months since troops stormed Red Mosque in the capital.
Musharraf said governments at the centre and in the provinces will be formed within a few weeks.
Musharraf was re-elected president by the pliant previous assembly in October, but resorted to imposing emergency rule in November in order to purge the Supreme Court of judges who may have ruled his re-election unconstitutional.
While the emergency was lifted after six weeks, ten of the judges remain under house arrest, including former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto's widower and political successor, this month signed an accord with Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf deposed, to form a coalition and both leaders had promised to reinstate the judges.
The dismissed judges, if restored, could reopen legal challenges against Musharraf's right to hold the presidency.
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