ISLAMABAD April 20: Pakistan Muslim League chief Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain said on Thursday that General Pervez Musharraf would be re-elected as president for another term and both the present and newly elected assemblies were fully competent to elect him.

Mr Hussain was speaking in response to journalists’ queries at the party’s secretariat on the occasion of the formal joining of PML by Abbas Sarfaraz, a former federal minister from Mardan in the NWFP.

Mr Hussain, however, did not say whether General Musharraf would continue to be Chief of Army Staff (COAS) beyond 2007.

Punjab Chief Minister Chaudhry Parvaiz Elahi had declared in Lahore recently that General Musharraf would remain in uniform even after the next elections, a suggestion that is vehemently contested by constitutional experts. He rebutted the allegations of PPP (Patriots) of attempts of merging it in the PML and said “they were already a part of our coalition and there was no need for any merger”.

Mr Hussain said that the scheduled talks between former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif in London were unlikely to bear fruit as both leaders were trying to hoodwink each other.

In the final analysis, he said, such “fruitless parleys” will only yield political dividends to the ruling PML-Q. Asked whether Ms Bhutto and Mr Sharif would be allowed to return home to contest the 2007 elections, the PML leader said one of them had chosen to go into self-exile and the other had left the country under a deal.

He made it clear though that there was no bar on the entry of either opposition leader. “The two leaders are welcome if they want to return and play their role in national politics,” he said.

In response to a query, the PML president said the next elections would either be held by the end of 2007 or in early 2008 but in no case will it linger up to 2009.

He admitted that there was an acute problem of quorum on the part of the treasury in the just concluded National Assembly session and expressed confidence that the issue would not resurface in future.