Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf has said he is not ready to resign despite suffering big losses in a parliamentary election this week.
Slain former prime minister Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) won the most seats in the National Assembly in Monday's election, while the allies of Mr Musharraf, the former army chief who seized power in a 1999 coup, suffered big losses.
But the PPP needs coalition partners and the president's camp is banking on persuading it to invite the pro-Musharraf Pakistan Muslim League (PML) to salvage his leadership.
Asked in an interview with the Wall Street Journal published today whether he contemplated resigning, Mr Musharraf said: "No, not yet. We have to move forward in a way that we bring about a stable democratic government to Pakistan."
He said it was premature to comment on who might be the country's next prime minister, as that was a matter for the political parties to decide.
Asked whether he could work with Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister he overthrew in 1999, Mr Musharraf said: "The government is run by the prime minister. The president has no mandate to share governing power with the prime minister."
He added: "The clash would be if the prime minister and president would be trying to get rid of each other. I only hope we would avoid these clashes."
Mr Sharif, whose party ran a close second in Monday's poll, has made driving Mr Musharraf from power his mission since returning from exile in Saudi Arabia in November.
Ms Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari, who took over as PPP leader after she was killed in December, said his party would not invite anyone from the PML into a broad-based coalition it planned to form.
The PPP wants Mr Sharif to join the coalition along with an ethnic Pashtun party that kicked Islamist parties out of power in the North West Frontier Province where militants operate.