Pakistani President Asif
Ali Zardari suffered a "cardiac episode," but will return to Pakistan after
a few days and will not resign as head of state, one of his close advisors told
The Cable today.
After The Cable reported
Tuesday that Zardari left his
country for Dubai and might not return, Zardari's associates and allies pushed
back hard and insisted that the president has no intention of stepping down.
Zardari's spokesman Farhatullah Babar
said
Wednesday, "All these media reports are totally speculative. The president is
in a hospital in Dubai for medical tests and a check-up as already planned."
Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) MP Shazia
Marri reportedly
called Foreign Policy magazine a
"two pennies rag."
A close advisor to Zardari called The Cable from Islamabad Wednesday to insist that not only will the
president return to Pakistan, his allies in the government and within the PPP are
working behind the scenes now to ensure that Zardari will return with the same
stature and power he had before he left the country.
The advisor said Zardari will return to Islamabad after a "few
days," and still plans to address a joint session of parliament to speak about
the "Memogate"
scandal that has embroiled his government and resulted in the resignation of Pakistan's
envoy to Washington, Husain Haqqani.
"This is going to be another classic Pakistani episode of
crisis, crescendo, negotiation, and then moving forward," the advisor said, saying
that a core group of Zardari supporters are working with Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani to take "stabilizing
actions" over the next 48 to 72 hours to quell the uproar and uncertainty
surrounding the president's sudden departure from Pakistan.
Gilani was set to meet with Pakistani military leaders
Wednesday as part of this effort, the advisor said, along with Zardari's son, Bilawal
Bhutto Zardari, the 23-year-old chairman of the PPP.
According to the advisor, Zardari, who has diabetes and high
blood pressure, had been in pain for three days and had a "cardiac episode"
that caused him to physically slump over -- an explanation for the Dubai trip
that contradicted Babar's claims that it was pre-planned. "It was not a heart attack and he's perfectly fine," the advisor
insisted.
Zardari had initially resisted going to the hospital out of concern
that he would be perceived as weak, but eventually decided to go, the advisor
said. Some of the tests performed on Zardari Tuesday in Dubai deemed he was
fine, others were inconclusive.
But Zardari's health issues were not the reason he sounded
"incoherent" during his weekend phone call with U.S. President Barack Obama, as The Cable reported
Tuesday, according to the advisor - rather, Zardari's use of language, his
words choices, and his accent made him difficult for Obama to understand.
"It was more of a syntax problem than an incoherence problem,"
the advisor said.
In Pakistan, where murky politics is the rule rather than
the exception, Zardari's many political opponents are seizing on the rumors that
he is on the way out to build pressure on him to leave, the advisor said,
adding that Zardari is not one to quit and that there is no political will for impeachment
or an outright coup.
"The president's health is fine, and he will be back," the
advisor said.
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