ISLAMABAD, Dec 8: President Asif Ali Zardari’s condition was improving in a Dubai hospital, his spokesman said on Thursday. However, conjectures in Islamabad about his departure continued, though in a less hysterical tone than on Wednesday.

“The health condition of President Asif Ali Zardari is improving and he is in a stable condition,” said a statement from the President House without disclosing the nature of his ailment.

“I have no answer to this technical question,” said spokesman Farhatullah Babar when asked to explain the nature of Mr Zardari’s disease.

Quoting the personal physician attending to the President in Dubai, Mr Babar said: “The president is stable, comfortable and is resting. Initial tests and investigations have been within normal range while further tests will be carried out.”

Moreover, he said, the president had been shifted to a normal hospital room from the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) on Thursday night.

Mr Babar reiterated that Mr Zardari was currently in Dubai for a “regular medical checkup” and again refused to say as to when he would return to the country.

It is because of conflicting statements from PPP members that the party has so far failed to kill the rumours circulating in the country.

A senior PPP leader and party’s information secretary, Qamar Zaman Kaira, during a TV talk show said that the president had gone to Dubai due to pain in his chest whereas the official spokesman has been stating that Mr Zardari was in Dubai for a regular checkup.

Another former PPP office-bearer said that the president had gone to Dubai on the insistence of his children as he was under stress because of the “tense and hostile political atmosphere.”

And to compound the confusion was the statement by Interior Minister Rehman Malik that the party members had forced the president to go to Dubai.

When Mr Babar’s attention was drawn towards conflicting statements by PPP leaders, he vaguely replied: “What can I do about it?”

It was perhaps after realising that the media was not ready to believe the official statements about President Zardari’s health, Information Minister Dr Firdous Ashiq Awan, during a press briefing after the cabinet meeting, had to ask reporters to “take the statements of presidential spokesman Farhatullah Babar as authentic”.

She said that ‘certain elements’ were active in spreading ‘baseless stories and rumours’ about the president’s health.

She expressed the hope that the president would soon return to Pakistan.

In another development, PML-N president Nawaz Sharif and Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani had telephonic conversation during which Mr Sharif inquired about the health of Mr Zardari.

It was the first direct contact between the two leaders after the PML-N chief filed a petition in the Supreme Court on the memo issue, in which the prime minister was also a respondent, besides President Zardari and Army chief Gen Ashfaq Parvez Kayani.

A handout from the Prime Minister House said Mr Gilani thanked Mr Sharif on behalf of PPP chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari for “his kind words and prayers for the early recovery of President Zardari”.

Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, the PPP chairman and son of President Asif Zardari, is still in the federal capital and, according to Mr Babar, he had no plan to go to Dubai for the time being.

Bilawal Bhutto, who has intensified his political activities after the departure of President Zardari to Dubai, met on Thursday two sons of the prime minister, MPA Syed Abdul Qadir Gilani and Syed Ali Musa Gilani.

The official announcement about the meeting says that they discussed the political situation and expressed their resolve to continue to serve the cause of democracy and the federation.

The PPP chairman, it said, directed the party leaders and workers to extend full support to Syed Ali Musa Gilani in the by-election which he is contesting from the constituency which is about to fall vacant in Multan after the resignation of former foreign minister Shah Mehmood Qureshi.

Opposition Leader in the Senate Maulana Abdul Ghafoor Haideri of the JUI-F and members belonging to the allied parties of the PPP met the prime minister separately to inquire about the health of President Zardari.

Those who called on the prime minister included Dr Farooq Sattar and Babar Ghouri of the MQM and Ghaus Bakhsh Mehar of the PML-Q.

Minister for Commerce Makhdoom Amin Fahim, Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Khursheed Shah, Minister for Kashmir and Gilgit-Baltistan Manzoor Ahmed Wattoo and Minister for Postal Services Sardar Mohammad Umar Gourgej also called on the prime minister.