Sharif, who has urged the masses to defy a government clampdown and join a nationwide protest, said the "chances of army takeover is absolutely nil".
A high-level meeting chaired by Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in Islamabad took stock of the deteriorating security situation in the restive Northwestern Frontier Province and authorised Army Chief Ashfaq Parvez Kiyani to lead a military effort in this regard.
Making the announcement, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani told Parliament that the Interior Ministry will be asked to 'move a summary to President Pervez Musharraf to commute the sentence of those on death row to life imprisonment'. Under Pakistan Constitution, the President has powers to commute sentences.
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday asked President Pervez Musharraf to address a joint sitting of the parliament as it is mandatory for him to do so under the constitution.
A Pakistani probe team has arrived in Sri Lanka to investigate whether there were any local links, including the possibility of the role of Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, on the attack on the Lankan cricket team in Lahore in March.
Pakistanis would like to see the armed forces "confined to garrisons" as the country has already paid an "enormous' cost for frequent interventions by military in politics, Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Thursday.
Pakistan's report on its probe into the dossier provided by India into the Mumbai terror attacks was on Monday examined in Islamabad, by a top level cabinet committee, headed by Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, before being handed over to New Delhi.
The findings of the report will be shared with India and the world community, Gilani told reporters at the airport in Islamabad after arriving in the provincial capital of Punjab province from Islamabad.
Ahead of the meeting of the foreign ministers of India and Pakistan in New York, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on Saturday urged Pakistan to shed its mindset of using terror as an instrument of state policy against New Delhi and take action against those involved in the terror attack on Mumbai. He made it clear that there was no change in India's stand on Pakistan since the Sharm-el-Sheikh talks with his counterpart Yousuf Raza Gilani.
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday confirmed the arrest of Hafiz Saeed, chief of the banned organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa.
Manmohan Singh and Yusuf Raza Gilani hold the key to South Asia's progress, observes Sanjaya Baru, former media advisor to the Prime Minister.
Pakistan is taking India's dossier on the Mumbai terror attacks "extremely seriously" and will "have to act fast" to complete its probe, Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani has said. "The dossier passed on to the government of Pakistan, we are taking it extremely seriously, and we have already started (an) investigation and the results will come soon," he told the Financial Times daily in an interview.
During a meeting with visiting NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, Gilani expressed Pakistan's "keen desire to defuse the situation in South Asia in the wake of the Mumbai attacks". "Pakistan will complete its inquiry into the dossier of information provided by India as soon as possible and will share its results with India and other countries in due course", he said.
In an effort to consolidate its grip on internal security affairs, the Pakistan government on Tuesday carried out a major revamp of the country's intelligence agencies, transferring the political wing of the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence to the civilian Intelligence Bureau. As part of the revamp, carried out by Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, the intelligence agencies would no longer be required to send secret reports to President Pervez Musharraf.
Seeking to down play the Indian Army chief's remarks that all options were open for dealing with Pakistan, Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani today said there was "tremendous" public pressure on Indian government after the Mumbai attacks and insisted that there was "no threat of war".
Seeking to play down Home Minister P Chidambaram's remarks that India may snap business and tourist links with Pakistan, Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday said he did not mind such statements as the Indian government was under 'tremendous' public pressure over the Mumbai attack.
Pakistan premier Yousuf Raza Gilani on Tuesday claimed that the material provided by India on the Mumbai attacks constituted "information" and not evidence, and said that "pragmatic cooperation" was the way forward for dealing with the 26/11 probe.
Former National Security Adviser of Pakistan Mahmud Ali Durrani, who was sacked after disclosing to media the Pakistani nationality of Mumbai attacker Ajmal Kasab, has said he had written authorisation from the prime minister to speak on the evolving situation in the wake of the 26/11 strikes.
Pakistan today said that nuclear proliferation network of atomic scientist A Q Khan was a "closed chapter" and the country is "mindful of its responsibilities as a nuclear weapon state as well as its international obligations."
Pakistan premier Yousuf Raza Gilani on Monday directed the Interior Ministry to send a team of experts to Sri Lanka to probe if elements based there were linked to the terrorist attack on Lankan cricketers in Lahore.Gilani issued the direction during a meeting in Islamabad with Interior Minister Rehman Malik, who apprised him on the overall security situation in the country.
"We want relations with India on the basis of equality. If Pakistan and India do not enter into negotiations for the betterment of the region, then someone else would get the benefit. If there will not be bilateral talks, the terrorists will take advantage of it," The News quoted Gilani, as saying.
Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani today accused the world of "double standards" in dealing with the Mumbai attacks and terrorist incidents in Pakistan, saying there was no need for the international community to make "so much noise" about the strike in India's financial hub.
"The situation on our eastern borders has once again become very fragile," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said in an address to a seminar in Islamabad on 'Democracy in Pakistan'. He accused India of indulging in a "blame game, media vilification campaign and war mongering" against Islamabad after the Mumbai attacks, which have been blamed on the Pakistan-based Lashkar e Tayiba
Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani today said the ISI has given its "feedback" to India on "some information" about the Mumbai attacks that New Delhi had shared with US intelligence agency CIA.
Amid reports of a rift between them, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani met in Islamabad on Wednesday to discuss the regional security situation after the country's admission that captured Mumbai attacker Ajmal Amir Kasab is its national. The meeting came amid Pakistani media reports that Zardari was angry over Gilani's decision to sack Durrani without consulting him. Durrani had been handpicked by Zardari for the key post last year.
A brief statement issued by the Prime Minister's House said Yousuf Raza Gilani had sacked Durrani 'for his irresponsible behaviour (of) not taking Prime Minister and other stakeholders into confidence and lack of coordination on matters of national security'. Gilani was quoted by Geo News channel as saying that he had sacked Durrani for commenting on the issue of the nationality of Iman alias Ajmal Kasab without taking him (Gilani) or the government into confidence.
American Vice President-elect Joseph Biden will travel to Pakistan this week to defuse regional tensions in the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, according to a media report.
Pakistan has appointed Saleem Raza, a former international banker, as central bank governor.
'Yousuf Raza Gilani, the prime minister, has insisted that Pakistan is not only working to track down those who may have had links to the attacks, but also promised that if India's allegations prove true, the perpetrators will be put on trial,' Fatima wrote in a column for Al-Jazeera. 'Given the government's track record, one can understand India's lack of faith in Pakistan's justice system,' she wrote in the piece titled, S Asian neighbours' linked destinies.
"Pakistan is a peace-loving country. We don't want to have war or aggression," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said, addressing a function on the occasion of the first death anniversary of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. "We want to have friendly relations with our neighbours -- Afghanistan and India," Gilani said.
'Common friends' of India and Pakistan are playing their role to defuse tensions between the two countries as war is not in the interest of either nation, Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Friday."War is not in the interest of any country and all issues should be resolved through dialogue," Gilani said."The peace-loving countries and the common friends of Pakistan and India are playing their role to defuse tensions between the two countries," he said.
Pakistan on Monday turned down British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's request for allowing UK authorities to interrogate the Pakistani suspects arrested in connection with the Mumbai terror attacks, saying it will not hand over any of its nationals to a foreign country and will act on them according to the country's own laws
Gilani, however, said it would take time to normalise relations that had worsened in wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, the News International daily said on Friday.
Taking exception to India's contention that "epicentre of terrorism" is located in Pakistan, Islamabad today warned that such comments would be counter-productive for joint efforts to combat the menace and insisted that none of those detained during the crackdown on JuD would be handed over to India.
"I have assured Prime Minister Manmohan Singh of our complete cooperation in investigating these attacks. We are prepared to engage India closely to expose the hidden hands behind these attacks," Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said.
Pakistani Premier Yousuf Raza Gilani on Monday said India should not get swayed by "partisan considerations" on the decisions arrived at during his meeting with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in Egypt, an apparent reference to uproar in New Delhi over certain aspects of the joint statement.
It is necessary to resolve all issues between India and Pakistan so that the countries could give attention to the problems of the people, he said in an interview to a TV news channel. Replying to a question about Pakistan's relations with India, he said Islamabad has always maintained that the ties "should be on the basis of equality."
India has asked Pakistan to take strict action against Lashkar-e-Tayiba founder Hafiz Mohammed Saeed, underworld dons Dawood Ibrahim and Tiger Memon and terror leader Maulana Masood Azhar, who are named in a list of 20 wanted terrorists handed over to Islamabad by New Delhi.
In the wake of the Mumbai terror attacks, the Pakistan Army chief has informed the country's leadership that if tensions with India mount further, the military will have to move troops from its restive tribal areas to the eastern borders, ending the war against local militants.
With the Pakistani link being suspected in the deadly Mumbai terror attacks, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has called a special meeting of his Cabinet to discuss the situation arising out of this development, particularly its impact on the Indo-Pak relations.
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