ISLAMABAD, July 25 A presidential spokesman on Saturday rejected former president Pervez Musharraf's claim that Benazir Bhutto wanted him to continue as president if she was elected prime minister and described the retired general's statement as “wishful thinking of a disgraced dictator”.

In a rejoinder to the former president's interview with an Indian channel, Farhatullah Babar said Mr Musharraf had been eased out of the Presidency in full public view and was now seeking a measure of public support to “escape the fate that befalls all dictators.”

Mr Babar said that Mr Musharraf's asse- rtion had confirmed Ms Bhutto's prediction, made during an interview in the last months of her life that “a day will come when Musharraf will beg for my pictures to sustain himself”.

He said that what the PPP leader thought of the dictator was graphically described in her two books, “Daughter of the East” and “Reconciliation”, and in innumerable interviews.

“Mr Musharraf should read her books and the remarks she publicly made about him in the interviews,” Mr Babar said.

“He must stand erect on his own feet and face the consequences of his misdeeds rather than seeking shelter behind the name and pictures of Ms Bhutto whom he chased and hounded when in power as all tinpot dictators do to the leaders of the masses.”