Islamabad, November 26:

Pakistan’s Pervez Musharraf, who once said his military uniform was part of his skin, will swear a new oath as a civilian president on Thursday, officials said.

If he carries it through — he backtracked on an earlier promise to resign from the army in 2004 — it would end eight years of military rule since he seized power in a bloodless coup.

It would also meet a key demand of the international community outraged by his state of emergency, now well into its fourth week despite his promise of free and fair general elections on January 8.

“My information is that he will take the oath as a civilian president on Thursday,” Attorney General Malik Muhammad Qayyum told AFP.

He said Musharraf, who seized power in a bloodless 1999 coup and has often portrayed himself as his nuclear-armed nation’s protector, would first resign as army chief before swearing himself in.

Last week the Supreme Court rubber-stamped Mush-arraf’s victory in an October 6 presidential election, clearing the way for him to serve a further five years in office. Qayyum said the defence ministry was expected to issue a formal notification of his impending resignation from the army on Monday or Tuesday .

“We expect today, hopefully, the notification will be issued,” Musharraf’s spokesman Ras-hid Qureshi said. “If it is received today, then one can expect the handing over and taking over (as army chief) could take place tomorrow or the day after,” he told AFP. That, in turn, would allow for the swearing-in on Thursday.

The oath would be administered by new chief justice, appointed after Musharraf sac-ked his predecessor for refusing to endorse his November 3 imposition of emergency rule.

The general has been under intense international pressure to end the emergency and hang up his uniform before becoming a civilian leader.

In the past two weeks he has orchestrated a series of legal steps to shore up his special measures and copper-bottom his presidency. As well as brushing aside challenges to his re-election, the Supreme Court has dismissed complaints against emergency rule, using almost exactly the same arguments of growing Islamic militancy and a meddling judiciary.

Earlier, Musharraf issued an edict declaring no court

could ever overturn the legal basis for the emergency order and subsequent decrees, which included firing some of the nation’s top judges. He issued another edict which shifted the power to end emergency rule from the army chief — himself — to the president, also himself.