Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf rejected calls to declare emergency powers and wants elections to take place in Pakistan, a spokesman said after widespread reports that the beleaguered leader would opt for authoritarian rule.

Private television channels and newspapers had reported that General Musharraf was poised to take a step that would probably delay elections due by the turn of the year and could result in restrictions on rights of assembly and place curbs on the media.

"In the president's view, there is no need at present to impose an emergency," Information Minister Mohammad Ali Durrani said.

"The president was under pressure from different political parties to impose an emergency, but he believes in holding free and fair election and is not in favor of any step that hinders it," Durrani added, without specifying which parties.

The ruling coalition parties have most to lose at the polls, and Musharraf's own popularity has plunged since he vainly attempted to oust the country's most senior judge.

A government spokesman had suggested the government could justify emergency rule by citing mounting insecurity after a spate of attacks - many of them suicide bombings - by Islamist militants allied to the Taliban and Al-Qaida over the past month.

Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim Khan said the measure could be warranted by the situation in tribal areas and North West Frontier Province, and by comments from US politicians that America should be prepared to strike inside Pakistan if it possessed actionable intelligence on Al-Qaida or Taliban targets.

But analysts and opposition leaders feared Musharraf might use emergency powers to overcome constitutional difficulties he faces in getting re-elected by the sitting assemblies while still army chief, and to stave off parliamentary elections due by the turn of the year.

Musharraf had planned to get re-elected in uniform between mid-September and mid-October before national and provincial assemblies are dissolved for parliamentary elections due in December or January.

He commands the simple majority needed to win re-election in the current assemblies, but there is a strong possibility that constitutional challenges could be upheld by a Supreme Court that delivered a momentous decision on July 20 to reinstate the chief justice who Musharraf had spent four months trying to sack.

US President George W. Bush yesterday urged Musharraf to hold free and fair elections.

"My focus in terms of the domestic scene there is that he have a free and fair election, and that's what we've been talking to him about and hopeful they will," Bush said at a White House news conference.

(China Daily via agencies August 10, 2007)