When Benazir Bhutto was assassinated on her return from exile last December, it became clear that, politically, the days of President Pervez Musharraf were numbered. Last Monday, 45 per cent of Pakistani voters went to the polls and rejected Mr Musharraf's party, the Pakistan Muslim League-Q (PML-Q).

Instead, the majority cast their votes in favour of Mrs Bhutto's party, the Pakistan People's Party (PPL), which led in the popular vote, and the Pakistan Muslim League-N (PML-N), the party of a previous Prime Minister, Nawaz Sharif. The Islamic fundamentalists, to the surprise of some, lost control of their stronghold in the North Western Frontier Province. That settles it then, right? Wrong.

Pakistan is a cauldron on the boil, not only because this week's elections have produced a result that is not to the liking of the army, the country's powerbroker. Pakistan is reckoned to be the geographical centre of worldwide Islamic terrorism. On its borders with Afghanistan, where it is widely assumed that al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden has located himself, the world's most wanted man continues to evade capture, or assassination. He is not alone in wishing to see the West destroyed.

Terrorist groups from Pakistan have established networks in the West, Britain in particular. Central to their operations, however, and a matter of grave concern for the United States and other Nato countries, is their operations in Afghanistan. Mr Musharraf's failure to clamp down on Pakistani supporters of the Taliban was a massive bone of contention between him and his strongest ally, the US, which supplied him with mountains of cash and weapons in the hope that he would search and destroy terrorist cells that were helping the Taliban effort against Nato forces in Afghanistan.

Delivery was negligible, which is why pressure was brought to bear on him to hold elections and restore democracy and to do this not as a man in command of the army but as a civilian. Should the election result see him disappear into the sunset, the Americans will not be unduly displeased.

The tale, in short, is not pretty. The results of the elections may make it even less prettier. With Mr Musharraf's power base narrowed considerably by them, it is clear that the way forward, or some cynics say, backwards, is a coalition between the PPP and PML-N, between Mrs Bhutto's party, whose co-chairman is her husband (but he did not contest the elections) and Mr Sharif. It should be straightforward but it is not. PPP will be wondering whether its leader can afford to dine with a candidate for radical Islam; and how long should the spoon be if Mrs Bhutto's widower decides to dine with him.

Perhaps the best bit of news in this election has been the loss suffered by a coalition of fundamentalists of the North Western Frontier Province. But the question being asked is whether this is enough, whether the PPP and the PML-N have it in them to pull Pakistan up by its bootstraps and point it in the direction of genuine democracy, whether a party led by a heroine's widower, known to the public as Mr Ten Per Cent - but who is not yet confirmed as the party's candidate for the role of Prime Minister - and another party whose leader is seen by the PPP as a threat to the secular society it is hoping to create in Pakistan, can close their eyes and seal a political pact. The problem with closing one's eyes to a strange political bedfellow is that you never quite know what you will wake up to in the cold light of dawn.

There is talk of horse trading between the two. This is never an easy business even in a favourable political environment. In one that is as fraught as Pakistan's, any successful attempt at this may be short-lived. It would be unwise to write off Mr Musharraf. Meanwhile, Pakistan and its allies tremble.