Source: CNN.com

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (CNN) — Pakistan’s President Gen. Pervez Musharraf headed for a two-day visit to Saudi Arabia on Tuesday as elections for Pakistan’s national assembly and its four provincial assemblies were scheduled for January 8.

Opposition parties, including those of former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, have indicated they would boycott elections so long as the emergency declaration and suspension of the constitution remained in place.

Opposition party leader and former cricket star Imran Khan launched a hunger strike in jail, saying he would keep it up until the Supreme Court justices sacked by Musharraf last month were reinstalled. Khan was jailed last week after escaping house arrest.

On Monday Musharraf moved closer to securing a new term as president when the Supreme Court, packed with judges Musharraf appointed in recent days, dismissed five major petitions contesting the validity of his re-election. One remaining petition will be heard on Thursday.

In Saudi Arabia Musharraf will meet with King Abdullah and other senior officials “to discuss issues of mutual interest,” Foreign Office spokesman Mohammad Sadiq said Monday.

Saudi Arabia is where Sharif, whom Musharraf deposed in a bloodless military coup in 1999, is in exile. Sharif had tried to return to Pakistan in September but was deported.

The trip is Musharraf’s first outside Pakistan since declaring a state of emergency on November 3.

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Tags: 2008, Elections, Musharraf, protests