The United States is possibly looking at a post-Musharraf administration in Pakistan, if media reports are any indications.

"If Mr Musharraf were to fall to an assassin's bullet ... it is unlikely that there would be mass uprisings in Lahore and Karachi, or that a religious leader in the Taliban mould would rise to power," the New York Times said, quoting American diplomatic and intelligence officials in Washington.

"Based on the succession plan, the vice chief of the army, General Ahsan Saleem Hyat, would take over as the leader of the army and Mohammedmian Soomro, an ex-banker, would become president," the report said.

'General Hyat, who is secular like Musharraf, would hold the real power', it said. 'But it is unclear whether General Hyat would be as adept as Musharraf at keeping various interest groups within the military in line'.

The record of Islamic political parties at the polls in recent years does not suggest any danger of their pulling off an electoral victory, the paper said.

For years, it said, the notion that Musharraf is all that stands between Washington and a group of nuclear-armed mullahs has dictated just how far the White House feels it can push him to root out Al Qaeda and Taliban operatives who enjoy a relatively safe existence in Pakistan.

The spectre of Islamic radicals overthrowing Musharraf has also limited the Bush administration's policy options, taking off the table any ideas about American military strikes against a resurgent Al Qaeda, which has camps in Pakistani tribal areas, the paper said.

The question of how to handle Musharraf, it said, is critical at a time when intelligence officials widely agree that the Taliban is expanding its reach in Pakistan, gradually spreading from remote areas into more settled regions of the country.

The fear within Washington that Islamic extremism has become a dominant force in Pakistan, the paper said, has been stoked in part by Musharraf himself.

It quotes analysts as saying that his warnings are used to maintain a steady flow of American aid and keep at bay demands from Washington for democratic reforms.

'He often invokes the dangers of Islamic radicalism when meeting American officials in Washington and Islamabad, and his narrow escape in two assassination attempts is frequently cited by President Bush as evidence of his tenuous grip on power', the paper noted.

While the Islamists would surely take power in any way possible, it said, an examination of polling data and recent election results however suspect in a less than democratic country provides little evidence that Islamists have enough support to take over the country.

The last time Pakistan went to the polls in 2002, religious political parties received just 11 percent of the vote, compared with more than 28 percent won by the secular party led by former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto.

That election, the paper said, may have even been a high-water mark for the Islamists, who were capitalising on surging anti-American sentiment after the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001.

Even though the Iraq war has also inflamed anti-Western attitudes, these sentiments do not seem to have translated into electoral gains for Islamist parties.

Islamist politicians, the report noted, received a drubbing in local elections in 2005, gaining less support than expected in their power base in the tribal areas. 

In September, a poll by the International Republican Institute, a respected organisation affiliated with the Republican Party that helps build democratic institutions in foreign countries, found that just 5.2 percent of respondents would vote for the main religious alliance, Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal, in national parliamentary elections.

Although the poll found that this alliance was the most popular in Balochistan, the southwestern province where Taliban support is strong, Islamist leaders lagged far behind both Musharraf and Bhutto, as well as another former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

'It is also thought to be unlikely that a successful attempt on Musharraf's life would mean wholesale changes to the power structure of Pakistani politics', it added.

'I am not particularly worried about an extremist government coming to power and getting hold of nuclear weapons', the paper quoted Robert Richer, who was associate director of operations in 2004 and 2005 for the Central Intelligence Agency as saying. 'If something happened to Musharraf tomorrow, another general would step in'.