Mr. Musharraf also wants immunity from prosecution for any impeachable deeds, which the governing coalition appears willing to grant if he steps down, they said.

The question of who would succeed Mr. Musharraf is a subject of almost as much maneuvering within the coalition as the plan to get rid of him.

Last week the leaders of the two major parties in the coalition announced that they would seek Mr. Musharraf’s impeachment on charges that include illegally suspending the Constitution and imposing emergency rule last November and wrongly dismissing nearly 60 judges under that decree.

Nawaz Sharif, the leader of the junior partner in the coalition, the Pakistan Muslim League-N, has demanded that if Mr. Musharraf is impeached, a trial must follow, a proceeding that would be very messy and could rip the country apart.

Since the parties’ announcement, inexorable pressure has built on Mr. Musharraf to take a way out of the crisis that would save him from embarrassing revelations during impeachment proceedings and that would protect the nation from prolonged political agony.

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Now Mr. Musharraf is expected to resign before the coalition can present the charges before Parliament early next week, said Nisar Ali Khan, a senior official in the Pakistan Muslim League-N.

His departure would present new challenges for the United States, which has sought to preserve Mr. Musharraf as an ally in the fight against the Taliban and militants with Al Qaeda who have nested in Pakistan’s tribal regions.

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But the momentum of events here is such that Mr. Musharraf’s American allies have become virtual bystanders as his rule appears close to an end.

A senior administration official in Washington said American officials had chosen not to get involved in the deliberations over Mr. Musharraf’s fate, having concluded that his presidency was unsalvageable. The official said it was unlikely that Mr. Musharraf could stay in Pakistan, citing threats to his safety, but added that there had been no discussion of offering him asylum in the United States.

The American ambassador to Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, met with senior officials of the political parties in the past few days, and a senior diplomat in the British Foreign Office, Sir Mark Lyall Grant, met with Mr. Musharraf here this week, Pakistani officials and a Western diplomat said.

But the envoys did not argue against Mr. Musharraf’s departure. Rather, they stressed that he be granted as dignified an exit as possible, the Pakistani officials said. The officials and diplomats spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

“The United States is now accepting Musharraf’s removal as a fait accompli,” Mr. Khan, the senior official in the Pakistan Muslim League-N, said. “They just want that he should not be humiliated.”

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Until now, anchored by the personal relationship between Mr. Bush and Mr. Musharraf, the United States had steadfastly supported the Pakistani president, frequently infuriating the four-month-old civilian coalition.

More recently, as American officials have demanded greater action against militants based in Pakistan, they have begun trying to build better relations with the political parties. “Now the reaction from the American friends is positive,” Mr. Khan said.

The Bush administration has also shifted much of its focus to Mr. Musharraf’s successor as army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who has pledged to keep the military out of politics.

The neutrality of the military has actually tipped the scales against Mr. Musharraf, said Arif Nizami, editor of the daily newspaper The Nation.

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“They are not even putting pressure on the civilians” to stop the president’s ouster, Mr. Nizami said of the military. “They are saying, ‘If you do it according to the book, it’s none of our business.’ They have pushed against Mr. Musharraf.”

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Mr. Musharraf gave a routine but subdued Independence Day address on Wednesday, calling for reconciliation. But by then many of his supporters had already left him.

He was seeking solace from “only a handful of people,” most of whom harbored personal interests in Mr. Musharraf’s survival, according to an account in a national newspaper, Dawn, by Zaffar Abbas, a respected political journalist.

One prominent supporter, Aftab Ahmed Khan Sherpao, who served as the interior minister in Mr. Musharraf’s government, said Thursday that he could no longer justify his allegiance to the president.

Mr. Sherpao represents a parliamentary constituency in the North-West Frontier Province, on the edge of the tribal areas, where the Taliban are winning control of village after village with little opposition from the military or government forces.

After consulting “with every friend” in his area, he said, he found that “not a single person was in favor of Musharraf. With one voice they said: ‘This is the time you have to be with the democratic forces.’ ”

While it appeared almost certain that Mr. Musharraf would leave before facing impeachment, there was great uncertainty over what would follow. Many Pakistanis believe the country could suffer even greater instability after Mr. Musharraf goes.

The coalition partnership between Mr. Zardari and Mr. Sharif has been deeply troubled from the start, and the current accord on ousting Mr. Musharraf is likely to fragment as soon as he is gone, politicians say.

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There is little agreement, for example, between the two men on the choice of the next president.

Mr. Zardari, head of the Pakistan Peoples Party, would like the post, according to his party supporters and senior members of the Pakistan Muslim League-N.

Mr. Sharif, his rival and coalition partner, is opposed to Mr. Zardari’s ascendancy to the presidency, but would go along with it if the presidency were stripped of many of its current powers, Pakistan Muslim League-N officials said.

According to the Constitution, an election for the president by the national Parliament and four provincial assemblies must be held 30 days after the office becomes vacant. Mr. Sharif and Mr. Zardari agreed last week that the choice of a presidential nominee would be made by a consensus between them.

“Everyone feels that the Musharraf era is over,” The Daily Times wrote in an editorial on Thursday. “But no one is actually in the mood to see what it is going to be like to be in the post-Musharraf era.”