Way paved for Musharraf call new Pakistan assembly

Pakistan's Election Commission paved the way for President Pervez Musharraf to convene a new parliament by completing the results of February 18 polls with the allocation of reserved seats for women and non-Muslim minorities.

Musharraf, who came to power as a general in a 1999 coup, will face a hostile parliament after the crushing election defeat of his allies.

The incoming government could try to drive Musharraf out of power, though the leader of the party that will lead the next coalition has not made his intentions clear.

Aides have denied speculative media reports that he intends to resign, and on Thursday General Ashfaq Kayani, the army chief Musharraf promoted in November after relinquishing his dual role as president and Chief of Army Staff, called on all sides to work together.

Pakistan has been reeling since mid-2007 from a suicide bomb campaign mounted by al Qaeda-inspired Islamist militants.

There have been four suicide attacks in the past week, and the country's state of political flux has raised international concern about the risks of instability in the nuclear-armed Muslim nation of 160 million people.

The Election Commission on Thursday night officially announced results of 331 of 342 seats in the National Assembly.

It confirmed the Pakistan People's Party of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto came out on top with 120, though 11 seats in the new assembly will be filled later because of court disputes or a delay in voting after the death of a candidate.

The commission allocated 60 seats for women and 10 for religious minorities proportionate to the number of seats parties won out of the 272 openly contested in the polls.

The PPP has delayed naming its candidate for the prime minister's slot, but Bhutto's widower and new party leader Asif Ali Zardari is ineligible as he does not hold a seat. Long-time deputy chairman Makhdoom Amin Fahim is widely tipped for the post.

The PPP has been in coalition talks with nearest rival the party of Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister Musharraf deposed. Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) or PML (N) has notched 90 seats so far.

The third main member of the proposed PPP-led coalition is the Awami National Party (ANP), an ethnic Pashtun nationalist group that trounced the Islamist Muttahida Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) alliance in North West Frontier Province.

The vanquished pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League holds 15 percent of the seats in the National Assembly, with just 51 to date.

Its ally, the Muttahida Qaumi Movement (MQM), which mainly represents Urdu-speaking Muslims who migrated to Pakistan from northern India after partition of the subcontinent in 1947, emerged as a major party in the cities of Bhutto's home province of Sindh, though the PPP will lead the provincial government.