Pakistan's ex-Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry says he will not resign and is planning to stay in office till his term ends in 2013. "When I did not succumb to the pressure and said no to top generals present at the President's camp office in Rawalpindi on March 9, 2007, with then Army Chief Pervez Musharraf, then why I should resign now," the President of Rawalpindi High Court Bar, Sardar Ismatullah Khan quoted Iftikhar as saying. "My tenure will end in the year 2013. Till then I will continue to serve the nation as Chief Justice," he added, The Dawn reported.
Justice Iftikhar had filed an affidavit before a 13-member Supreme Court on May 29, 2007, stating that top intelligence officials had pressured him into resigning. According to the statement, those who had pressured him included the then heads of the Military Intelligence (MI), Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Intelligence Bureau (IB), the President's Chief of Staff (COS) and an unnamed official. Sardar Ismatullah said Justice Iftikhar had dismissed the report that he had reached an understanding with the coalition government to resign immediately after reinstatement.