Kualampur, Mar 19: The Commonwealth is likely to lift a four-year suspension of Pakistan in April, following a push by President Pervez Musharraf to return to the country to democratic rule, the organisation's secretary-general Don Mckinnon said on Friday. He said the 52-member Commonwealth of Britain and its former colonies wasn't influenced by the strong backing that Musharraf enjoys from the U.S., which conferred "major non-NATO ally" status on Pakistan Thursday. In an interview with the Associated Press, Mckinnon said, "We aren't in the business of just the following someone else," adding: "Our judgement is made on the basis of the country's democratic credentials and value of its democratic institutions." A nine-country meeting of the Commonwealth that will meet in London at the end of April will include the foreign ministers from India, Sri Lanka, Canada, Nigeria, Bahamas, Malta, Lesotho, Samoa and Tanzania. The Commonwealth had suspended Pakistan after Musharraf, then Pakistan's army chief, toppled the elected President Nawaz Sharif in a bloodless coup in 1999. The suspension was renewed at the Commonwealth summit in Abuja, Nigeria, in December 2003.
Bureau Report