ISLAMABAD, Aug 9: US Secretary of State Dr Condoleezza Rice spoke to President Gen Pervez Musharraf twice on Thursday, first in the middle of the night when speculations were rife about declaration of an ‘emergency’ in Pakistan and then later in the afternoon. And Dr Rice was not the only top diplomat to touch base with Gen Musharraf well past midnight, it is learnt.

Interestingly, while the US embassy confirmed Dr Rice’s telephone calls to the president, the government officials remained evasive and tight-lipped about it. There was no word about it either from the Foreign Office or the Presidency.

The US embassy Spokesperson in Islamabad, Elizabeth Colton, was a bit more forthcoming when contacted by this correspondent on Thursday evening and confirmed that Dr Rice had spoken to President Musharraf twice during the day. However, she declined to go into the specifics of their conversation.

Well-placed diplomatic sources told Dawn that there were other late-night diplomatic efforts as well from some key world capitals to dissuade the president from seriously considering the option of emergency.

“It was not just the US intervention but there was a lot of diplomatic and political effort from other ends also to try and dissuade the president from imposing emergency,” is how an insider put it.