Islamabad: Asif Ali Zardari is here to stay and has no plans to travel abroad, said an official, refuting reports that the Pakistan president's return from Dubai could be just a "cameo appearance" and he would later leave for a long convalescence either in London or Dubai.
The president's spokesperson Farhatullah Babar on Tuesday contradicted reports that Zardari was planning to leave for London, reported Associated Press of Pakistan.
Babar said the president was in the country and here to stay. There were no plans for travel abroad, he added.
Zardari had suddenly flown out of Pakistan on December 6 to Dubai where he was admitted in a hospital. His exact health status is not known with reports ranging from a heart attack to a stroke that caused bleeding in his brain. He returned to Pakistan on Sunday night.
New York Times quoted some Pakistani and Western officials last week as saying that "if Zardari returned, it could be only for a cameo appearance before December 27", his wife and former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's fourth death anniversary on December 27.
After that, Zardari would probably leave for a long - perhaps permanent - convalescence in London or Dubai, the report quoted officials as saying.
Benazir Bhutto, the first woman prime minister of Pakistan, was assassinated in December 2007, after a Pakistan Peoples Party rally in Rawalpindi, just two weeks before the scheduled parliamentary elections of 2008.
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