Islamabad - Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf on Wednesday called off his visit to China, hours before his departure, as the possibility of his impeachment brewed amid crucial meetings of the country's ruling coalition.

Musharraf was scheduled to leave for China in the afternoon to attend Friday's opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics and meet Chinese leaders, including Prime Minister Hu Jintao.

Islamabad, Aug 6 : During the crucial meeting yesterday with PML-N leader Nawaz Sharif, PPP Co-chairman Asif Ali Zardari is learnt to have told him that he was ready in principle to impeach President Pervez Musharraf, provided that all coalition partners assured their support for this endeavour, and the ruling coalition had the requisite numbers (read majority) in the National Assembly.

Karachi, Aug. 4 : Describing the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) as Pakistan’s first line of defence, President Pervez Musharraf on Sunday rubbished allegations that it was involved in the July 7 bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul, and that it had a role to play in last week''s serial bomb blasts in Bangalore and Ahmedabad.

Addressing businessmen in Karachi, Musharraf said that the people of Pakistan should defend Pakistan against such conspiracies, and warned that weakening the ISI would also weaken the global war on terror.

Islamabad, Aug 3 : Pakistan Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani has discontinued, may be temporarily, an old practice of meeting President Pervez Musharraf before and after every foreign visit.

“It is not required under the rules that the premier should meet the President every time he embarks on or comes back from a foreign visit,” a senior official said.

Lahore, Aug 1 : Leader of the House in the Senate, the Upper House in Pakistan’s parliament, Mian Raza Rabbani has said that President Pervez Musharraf was a major destablisling factor for the PPP-led coalition government in Islamabad, and that his impeachment would be a priority issue for the Yousuf Raza Gilani government “once it gained the requisite strength in parliament”.

“The President remains the major destabilising factor for the coalition government,” The News quoted Rabbani as saying while talking to journalists at a press conference here last evening.

Toronto, July 30 : A former Pentagon analyst John McCreary has reportedly said the recent drama of first putting the ISI under the control of Pakistan Prime Minister and then reversing the decision to put it back under Interior Ministry’s purview, had “humiliated the Pakistan prime minister”.

By putting ISI back under interior ministry’s control, President Pervez Musharraf and the armed forces humiliated the prime minister, he said.