Last night, he issued an ordinance formally institutionalizing the National Command Authority (NCA)– established in February 2000. The ten-member body “exercise[s] complete command and control over all nuclear and space related technologies, systems and matters.”

The president chairs the NCA with the prime minister as vice chairman. Its remaining members are the foreign, defense, and interior ministers; chiefs of the army, naval, air force staff; the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff committee; and the director general of the Strategic Plans Division, who also serves as secretary general of the group.

Musharraf will also issue five other ordinances, one of which will reportedly satiate Benazir Bhutto (and indirectly Nawaz Sharif) by lifting the bar on a third prime ministerial term.