The International Crisis Group (ICG), a Brussels-based think tank, had in a report issued on Wednesday said that ‘unless Musharraf steps down, tensions in the wake of Benazir Bhutto's murder will worsen, and Pakistan could descend into civil war from which only extremists would gain’.

Reacting angrily to the report, the Pakistan government has said the ICG ‘neither has the credentials nor the credibility and lacks representational standing, specially on Pakistan's national affairs’.

"Urging the President of Pakistan to quit and the US to encourage the Pakistan military leadership to persuade the President of Pakistan to resign is tantamount to propagating seditious views against the laws of the country," a government spokesman said in a statement issued on Friday.

He said that under the Constitution, the President is the supreme commander of the armed forces and comments such as those released to the media by the ICG amounts to ‘promoting sedition’.