Musharraf building comfy retirement home

updated 5:40 p.m. ET Aug. 29, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan - Predictions that Pervez Musharraf will have to flee Pakistan to escape treason charges have died along with the coalition that drove him from the presidency.

The ex-general can now eye comfortable — though high-security — retirement in the luxury villa, complete with a swimming pool and strawberry patch, that he is building in an elite suburb of the capital.

Since resigning Aug. 18 to avoid impeachment, the former military ruler has stayed below the radar as the country he ran for nine years plunged into fresh political turmoil.

Nawaz Sharif, whose government Musharraf toppled in a 1999 coup, has been baying for revenge in the form of a trial for sedition — a crime punishable with death.

But he pulled his party out of the government this week as the widower of slain former leader Benazir Bhutto made a grab for Musharraf's succession.

Asif Ali Zardari, who has seized control of his late wife's party and expects lawmakers to elect him head of state on Sept. 6, has said he doesn't object to Musharraf putting his feet up in Pakistan.

And many believe Musharraf stepped down only after Zardari promised to leave him in peace — partly to please foreign backers such as the United States and Saudi Arabia.

"There is hardly any chance that Musharraf will ever be tried in Pakistan," said Nazir Naji, a commentator on Pakistan's top-selling Jang newspaper. "I believe Musharraf got all the guarantees he wanted."

Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani told reporters Friday that Zardari — who is widely expected to win a Sept. 6 presidential election by lawmakers — was staying at a hilltop mansion in Islamabad's government quarters "for security reasons."

He did not elaborate, but an intelligence official said there had been reports that the presidential hopeful could be the target of an attack and that he had switched locations after Musharraf's Aug. 18 resignation.

Still living at 'Army House'
Musharraf, a gregarious 65-year-old who counted President Bush as a personal friend, has received a stream of guests at Army House in Rawalpindi, south of the capital, where he continues to live even though he stepped down as army chief nine months ago.

He has taken to the tennis court and the golf course to unwind after a tumultuous nine-year reign in which he took Pakistan into America's war on terror, warded of economic calamity and dealt with the aftermath of the devastating 2005 earthquake.

"He's laughed off the reports that he is about to leave the country," said Tariq Azim, a leader of the main pro-Musharraf party defeated in February elections.

"He said 'I'm not going anywhere, I'm staying in Pakistan. My house is being built and it will take another three or four months'" to complete, Azim said.

As well as a bogeyman for his feuding political enemies, Musharraf remains a prime target for Islamic extremists who hate him for allying the Muslim world's only nuclear power with the West.

He has escaped several assassination attempts and officials say the army will continue to guard its former commander closely.

But a visit to 1-A Park Road in Islamabad's Chak Shahzad district on Friday suggested that Musharraf and his wife Sehba are unwilling to live in a bunker, however well-appointed.

Behind a hedge, the spacious villa on a five-acre plot is protected only by a wall of less than six feet in places. Coils of shiny barbed wire run along the top of the barrier to thwart would-be intruders.

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