Britain and America are being accused of meddling in Pakistan's politics by pressing its election winners not to remove President Musharraf after his allies' crushing electoral defeat.

Senior figures in the two biggest parties in the new Parliament made the allegations to The Times after British and US envoys met several party leaders following parliamentary elections last Monday.

Robert Brinkley, the British High Commissioner to Pakistan, held talks on Thursday with Asif Ali Zardari, Benazir Bhutto's widower and successor as head of the Pakistan People's Party, which won the most seats.

On Friday Mr Brinkley met Nawaz Sharif, the former Prime Minister, whose Pakistan Muslim League (N) won the second-highest number of seats and is now trying to form a coalition government with the PPP.

Bhutto was killed by bomb blast

The team from the Metropolitan Police’s Counter Terrorism Command have backed the claim that Benazir Bhutto was not shot

Multimedia

• Pictures: death of Benazir Bhutto

• Pictures: Pakistan

BACKGROUND

• Pakistan in turmoil as ‘martial law’ imposed

• Bhutto escapes as bombers kill 126

• Timeline: Pakistan's period of turmoil

• The man out to oust a President

• Internal crisis gives Pakistan reason for hope

Related Links

• Pakistani general killed by teenage bomber

• Analysis: Musharraf is finished and should quit

• Opponents urge defeated Musharraf to resign

Multimedia

• Pakistan in pictures and video

Anne Patterson, the US Ambassador, met Mr Zardari on Wednesday and Friday, and held further talks on Friday with the head of the Awami National Party, another potential coalition partner. She met Mr Musharraf on Tuesday and Friday and is due to meet Mr Sharif today or tomorrow, according to the US Embassy.

Brian Hunt, the American consul in Lahore, also met Mr Sharif's brother, Shahbaz, on Wednesday as well as Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent figure in the PPP, who led the lawyers' movement against Mr Musharraf last year.

British and US officials publicly insist that the meetings were routine or introductory, and deny urging any party not to remove Mr Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999.

But senior figures in the PPP and PML (N) said that British and US officials had urged them not to try to impeach Mr Musharraf or reinstate the deposed Chief Justice, who would be sure to invalidate the President's re-election last year. “There is huge pressure from America to work with Musharraf, but we'll do whatever we feel is right,” a senior PPP figure said.

A senior aide to Mr Sharif said: “The British and the Americans are working together on this. They don't understand that it's time for Musharraf to go.” Neither was willing to speak on the record. But Mr Ahsan accused the British and American Governments of continuing to back Mr Musharraf against the will of the Pakistani people. “Why should the Americans and Brits continue to put pennies in his cap? I don't understand,” he said. “So far, this policy is in tatters. They've got to rethink.”

A US embassy spokeswoman said: “It is up to those elected to form a government. We look forward to working with that government, whoever its leaders will be.” But diplomats say that the British and US Governments, while realising that Mr Musharraf is weakened, are concerned about how a successor might affect co-operation in the War on Terror.

The New York Times reported on Friday that Mr Musharraf agreed last month to let the Americans intensify secret strikes against suspected terrorists by pilotless aircraft launched in Pakistan. US officials are also hoping to deploy about 30 American counter-insurgency trainers to teach a Pakistani force how to fight al-Qaeda and Taleban militants. Western diplomats are concerned about Mr Sharif, who has had close links to Islamist groups, as well as Saudi Arabia, and has said he would like to cease military operations against the militants.

“We will not bow to US pressure, just as when we went ahead with conducting six nuclear tests without caring for their pressure,” Mr Sharif said.

A car in which the most senior Pakistani military officer to be killed by militants died yesterday was examined by army and police officials.

Lieutenant-General Mushtaq Ahmed Baig, the Army’s top medical officer, was killed by a suicide bomber in the city of Rawalpindi. Two of his staff and five passers-by also died when the attacker, who was on foot and thought to have been about 16, detonated his bomb when the car stopped at traffic lights. A dozen people were wounded.

In a second attack yesterday, militants opened fire and threw a grenade into an office of the British aid agency Plan International in the northwestern town of Mansehra, killing four Pakistanis and wounding nine. The agency, which is based in Woking, Surrey, immediately halted its work in Pakistan, but has not withdrawn staff. It was not known who was behind the attack or why it was carried out.

Times Recommends

• Over the Wall
• Why Africa welcomes the ‘new colonialism’
• Which will come out on top: paper or gold?