General Pervez Musharraf will resign as army chief if he wins re-election as Pakistan's president, a government lawyer has said.

The announcement made in the supreme court on Tuesday was the first clear official statement that Musharraf plans to contest the upcoming election while in uniform, then relinquish it afterward.

His current presidential term expires November 15. He is expected to seek another five-year term in a vote by all provincial and national lawmakers by October 15.

The promise to stand down as army chief removes a major objection to Musharraf's proposed re-election, but legal challenges abound.

Pakistan's supreme court is set to decide on a slew of petitions challenging the general's authority.

A nine-member panel of judges took up six petitions on Monday urging the court to disqualify him as a candidate in the next presidential elections.

In one petition, Jamaat-e-Islami, Pakistan's largest Islamic group, said a 2004 parliamentary act that enabled Musharraf to become president while he still held the army chief’s post was against the constitution.

Musharraf's "candidature for the election of the office of the president of Pakistan ... for the next term is void, malafide, unconstitutional, without lawful authority and of no legal effect," said the petition.

It was unclear when the court would make a ruling.

The announcement on Musharraf quitting his army job was read out in Islamabad during the court hearing into the opposition petitions.

"If elected for a second term as president, Musharraf shall relinquish charge of (the post of) chief of army staff soon after elections and before taking the oath of president for the second term," Sharfuddin Pirzada, the government lawyer said.

The move was confirmed by Tariq Azeem, the deputy information minister.

"The time has come for Musharraf to shed his military uniform," he told AFP. "He will have to hang up his uniform before starting his next term."

Bhutto's plans

Benazir Bhutto, a former prime minister, has said a proposed power-sharing deal with Musharraf that has been the subject of months of negotiations depended on whether he would quit his military role.

Bhutto is also planning her return from exile October 18 to contest parliamentary elections that must be held by mid-January.

The general's authority slipped when he tried to remove Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, the supreme court's chief judge, this March. It sparked a pro-democracy protest movement and the court later reinstated Chaudhry.

In another legal challenge, Nawaz Sharif's party has petitioned the supreme court to begin contempt proceedings against the government for deporting the former prime minister to Saudi Arabia last Monday hours after he arrived back in Pakistan after seven years in exile.

On August 23, the court had ruled that Sharif had the right to return. A hearing on that petition has not yet been fixed.

Musharraf, seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999, by ousting Sharif.

PHOTO CAPTION

A billboard carries a picture of President Pervez Musharraf in Islamabad in August. (AFP)

Al-Jazeera