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Islamabad: President Pervez Musharraf has warned against the risks of mismanagement for a country lacking sound leaders, amid speculation he could step down and leave the new civilian leadership to run Pakistan.
Addressing an audience made up largely of military officers at the National Defence University late on Thursday, Musharraf spoke in broad terms, though previously he has made clear his disdain for the civilian leaders of Pakistan's main parties.
Isolated figure
"Mismanagement and lack of potential in the leadership will lead to a weakening of the country," said Musharraf, without specifying he was talking about Pakistan.
Musharraf, who came to power as a general following a coup in 1999, has cut an increasingly isolated figure since the parties supporting him were defeated in an election last February.
The US has forged strong communications with General Ashfaq Kayani, who succeeded Musharraf as army chief in November, to preserve Pakistan's role as a crucial US ally in the war on terrorism.
The army has adopted a more constitutional role under Kayani, who held talks with US Admiral Michael Mullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, earlier this week.
Though generals have led Pakistan more than half the time since the country was founded in 1947, analysts do not expect the army to intervene to keep its former chief in power.
Like the army, the US does not want to see Musharraf humiliated, but it has also signalled it won't prop him up, according to a senior adviser to Asif Ali Zardari, whose Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leads the new government.
Western allies hope the new government will settle in, rather than risk further instability by letting Musharraf's anticipated departure turn nasty.
The adviser to Zardari, the widower of assassinated former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, said that Musharraf was reconciled to resigning, and ways were being worked out to afford him a dignified exit, though the president's spokesman has issued denials Musharraf was planning to quit.
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