WASHINGTON, Sept 18: The United States has said that it would reiterate its support for a 'fully functioning' democracy in Pakistan if the issue of President Pervez Musharraf keeping or giving up one of the two posts he currently holds came up for discussion during his visit.

A senior State Department official also said that so far the US administration had not seen any development to suggest that President Musharraf had decided to deviate from the commitment he made to the opposition about quitting the army by the end of this year.

The department's comments were given at a briefing on Friday afternoon hours after the Washington Post published an interview, quoting Gen Musharraf as saying that "a vast majority of the Pakistani people want me in uniform."

Reporters at the department's daily briefing interpreted this as indication that President Musharraf had made up his mind to keep both the posts, that of the army chief and the president.

They demanded a reaction to Gen Musharraf's statement from the department's deputy spokesman Adam Ereli, claiming that this was a deviation from the commitment of Dec 24, in which he agreed to give up the post of the army chief under the 17th amendment.

Mr Ereli disagreed with this interpretation, saying that he did not know if the quote in the Post's interview was "new or old."

The United States, he said, had checked the statement and had concluded that "there has been no new development on this issue since Thursday when a government spokesman (in Islamabad) retracted statements to the effect that President Musharraf had decided not to leave the military."

"Our understanding is that President Musharraf's decision on his military future has not been taken, but that there is a clear direction that he and Pakistan are committed to moving" in the direction of democracy, said Mr Ereli.

"And we do not see any significant deviation from that commitment or that direction," he added.

"Exactly," said the State Department official when a reporter suggested that President Musharraf had already taken a decision to leave the army when he signed the agreement with the MMA last year and now the issue is whether he is going to renege on this commitment or keep it.

"I'm saying that we have no cause to believe, based on what has been said and done in the last several days, that there is any deviation from that commitment," said Mr Ereli.