ISLAMABAD, May 31: A key party in Pakistan’s ruling coalition criticised US President George W. Bush on Saturday for lending support to President Pervez Musharraf.

A spokesman for the party of Nawaz Sharif, whose government was ousted by Musharraf’s 1999 coup, said on Saturday that Bush’s call could harm Pakistan-US relations.

“He should have advised Musharraf to step down. This would have earned a lot of respect for President Bush and the United States of America in the hearts and minds of the people of Pakistan,” Siddiq-ul-Farooq told The Associated Press.

“Our party has not taken President Bush’s call as a friendly and pro-democratic step,” Farooq said.

Musharraf ended his eight-year domination of Pakistani politics by resigning from the army last year and holding elections in which his political allies were routed. He has vowed to cooperate with the new civilian government.

But the two-month-old coalition government seems to be held together by the desire to strip the unpopular president of his remaining powers, including the right to dissolve parliament.

Asif Ali Zardari, whose party leads the government, recently described Musharraf as a “relic of the past” and indicated that public opinion could force him to abandon efforts to negotiate a solution with the presidency. However, his party has yet to commit itself clearly to Sharif’s drive for the parliament to impeach Musharraf for actions including his purge of the Supreme Court last year.

A member of Mr Zardari’s party said on Friday that an impeachment motion is not certain to gain the necessary two-thirds majority in the parliament.

Meanwhile, Athar Minallah, a lawyer close to the deposed chief justice, Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry, has also criticised Bush’s intervention.

The US government should “strengthen the democratic forces in this country rather than lending its support to a man who is the most hated person today in Pakistan,” Mr Minallah said.

—AP