Pakistan’s suspended parliamentary elections will go ahead by February, the government promised today.

Pakistan will hold parliamentary elections early in the new year the prime minister said today.

Opposition legislators submitted their resignations today as part of their efforts to undercut President General Pervez Musharraf’s re-election bid, while two of his opponents filed fresh legal challenges to his candidacy.

Hundreds of opponents of Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf jailed since the weekend were ordered to be released today by the country’s chief justice.

President Gen Pervez Musharraf will step down as army chief and restore civilian rule to Pakistan, but only after he secures re-election as president, a government lawyer said today.

Pakistan President Gen Pervez Musharraf will make a final attempt to seal a deal with exiled former Premier Benazir Bhutto that could keep the general in power, a senior official said today.

Former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto and President General Pervez Musharraf appeared to suffer a major setback in their efforts to reach a deal that would shore up his fraught re-election bid and allow her to return to Pakistan to contest parliamentary elections.

Former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto said today that power-sharing talks with President General Pervez Musharraf were at a standstill, but that she planned to return to the nation even without a deal.

The pre-dawn airstrike aimed at Ayman al-Zawahri in a remote Pakistani village was intended as a devastating blow to al-Qaida but it has strained ties with a key US ally in the war on terror and could provoke more anti-Americanism in the Islamic country, analysts said today.

Chaudhry Shujaat Hussain, the head of Pakistan’s ruling party and a loyal ally of the nation’s military ruler, was elected caretaker prime minister in a rubber-stamp vote in parliament today.