ISLAMABAD: President Asif Ali Zardari will return to Pakistan on Friday from a trip to Dubai, the foreign ministry spokesman said on Thursday.

“President Zardari has arrived in Dubai on a private visit and will return tomorrow,” Abdul Basit told Reuters.

According to an earlier report by the Associated Press, the president had left for Dubai where he would attend a wedding.

The officials said Thursday the president would be back in Pakistan on Friday morning and that the trip was not connected to the current crisis.

They didn’t give their names because they were not authorized to release the information.

The planned trip comes at time when Zardari is facing growing threats over a memo allegedly crafted by his former ambassador to the United States seeking help in preventing a coup by Pakistan’s powerful generals.

Zardari, 56, was released from a Dubai hospital last month after being treated for what Pakistani officials said was a transient ischemic attack, in which blood supply to a part of the nervous system is cut off, but not for long enough to kill tissue as in a stroke.

His trip to Dubai in December had triggered speculation that he might resign.