Gen Pervez Musharraf, the army commander in charge of Tuesday's coup in Pakistan, was desperately searching yesterday for a way out of imposing martial law on the country.
The population remained calm, and people on the street in Islamabad expressed support for the overthrow of the prime minister, Mr Nawaz Sharif, to reporters. Internationally, however, the general response was alarm at the seizure of power by the army in a nuclear-capable state.
As Washington, the UN and the International Monetary Fund condemned the army's actions, Pakistan appeared to be in limbo.
Britain will push for Pakistan's suspension from the Commonwealth following the coup, the British Foreign Office Minister, Mr Peter Hain, said. Gen Musharraf spent yesterday closeted in a series of meetings with politicians and senior military officers in an increasingly frantic bid to find a constitutional solution to the current crisis.
Last night he held talks with the president, Mr Rafiq Tarar, who is a Sharif loyalist, in their first meeting since the coup. No details of the talks emerged.
The embattled general had to cancel a statement on his future plans for running the country yesterday, admitting he was not ready. "You can very well understand that this is not something that one expects to happen every day and whatever was done it was a spontaneous reaction, actually by the army, to what actions, and wrong action, Mr Nawaz Sharif had taken," a military spokesman, Brig Rashid Qureshi, said.
If no solution is found, it is likely that martial law will have to be declared and the constitution suspended. That would further damage Pakistan's credibility overseas.
Yesterday, the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, condemned the actions of the Pakistani military.
"We expect them to return to democratic rule and want to hear what their plans are," she said. She added that it had created "a new level of uncertainty" on the subcontinent.
In separate statements by Finland, which holds the EU presidency, and the EU's executive body, the army take-over was deplored and a rapid return to civilian rule was called for.
As Pakistan's most important trading partner, the EU said it was "deeply concerned about the implications for regional stability in South Asia".
Last night, the IMF made it clear that the talks it had been holding with Mr Sharif on future loans to the heavily indebted country were now in abeyance and that discussions were effectively suspended until democracy was restored.
Members of Mr Sharif's family said he was being held in a government guesthouse close to Islamabad airport, on the outskirts of the city. The prime minister's brother Shabhaz, the chief minister of Punjab province, and Lieut-Gen Khawaja Ziauddin, whose promotion to replace Gen Musharraf provoked the coup, were still in what the army described as "protective custody".
The leader of Pakistan's main Islamic party, Mr Qazi Hussain Ahmad, a chief campaigner for Gen Musharraf, said that now that Mr Sharif had been overthrown, the military must allow early elections.
The atmosphere in Islamabad yesterday was almost bizarrely calm with most people going about their business as usual.