Rice may have prevented Pak emergency: Report

Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf decided against imposing a state of emergency in the country apparently after receiving two telephone calls from US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Rice spoke to Musharraf first in the middle of the Wednesday night when speculation was rife about declaration of an emergency in Pakistan and then later in the afternoon on Thursday, Dawn daily reported on Friday.

Besides Rice, some top officials of the European Union spoke to Musharraf to dissuade him from imposing emergency, it said.

Interestingly, while the US embassy confirmed Rice's telephone calls to the Pakistan President, government officials remained tight-lipped about it. There was no word about it either from the Foreign Office or the Presidency.

US embassy spokesperson, Elizabeth Colton, said that Rice spoke to Musharraf twice.

However, she declined to go into the specifics of their conversation, the newspaper reported. There were other late-night diplomatic efforts as well from some key world capitals to dissuade Musharraf from seriously considering the option of emergency, it said.

"It was not just the US intervention but there was a lot of diplomatic and political effort from other ends also to try and dissuade the President from imposing emergency," it quoted an unnamed official as saying.