Doctors yet to determine Pak President Zardari’s condition
The doctors are “yet to determine whether the president’s condition was due to an adverse reaction to the medication he was taking or a development related to his pre-existing cardiac condition”, a statement by Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari’s spokesman has said.
Zardari was due to address the national assembly this week after the supreme court admitted an opposition leader's petition demanding a judicial inquiry into the memo issue, including any role played by Zardari. That address has now been postponed.
Rumours about Zardari “fleeing” Pakistan have been doing the rounds in Islamabad since late tuesday night and there was widespread speculation in the media, especially TV news channels, that he may be about to resign on the pretext of “ill health”.
A statement from the prime minister’s office said Zardari “went to Dubai following symptoms related to his pre-existing heart condition. After the initial medical tests in Dubai, doctors found him to be in stable condition”, adding that Zardari’s Dubai visit was “at the insistence of his children”.
Zardari’s son and ruling Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) chairman Bilawal Bhutto Zardari met Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani in Islamabad Wednesday. Footage on state-run television showed Gilani and a solemn-looking Bilawal, who was wearing a Sindhi cap, dark brown shalwar-kameez and a brown shawl. Zardari travelled to Dubai after holding meetings with Gilani, Senate Chairman Farooq Naek, who is also the acting president, and Interior Minister Rehman Malik.
Zardari and his government have been under pressure since Pakistani-American businessman Mansoor Ijaz made public a secret memo, which he claimed he had drafted and delivered to the US military on the instructions of Husain Haqqani. His sudden departure triggered an intense speculation with an American website The Cable — a blog of the prestigious US magazine ‘Foreign Policy’ -- saying that “it is growing expectations inside the US government that Zardari may be on the way out”.
The blog an unnamed former American official as saying that the US government was informed that Zardari had a “minor heart attack” on Monday night and flew to Dubai in an air ambulance. The ‘memogate’ centres on a memo sent to a top American official in May asking for help in reining in Pakistan’s military, following the raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
The memogate scandal took a new turn recently when Ijaz claimed that Haqqani and Zardari had prior knowledge of the US military raid that killed Osama bin Laden on May 2. The Pakistani president has been under increased pressure over the scandal that has infuriated the country’s powerful army. Zardari’s wife, late former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, had gone into self-imposed exile to Dubai in 1998.
In her second term, Benazir was toppled in 1996 as prime minister on charges of corruption, and she went to Dubai. Bhutto returned to Pakistan in October 2007 after an understanding with then president Musharraf.
