The Islamic republic has been embroiled in months of crisis ranging from opposition to President Pervez Musharraf to Islamist violence, raising fears that victims of the October 8 quake could be forgotten two years on.

"This is not a political issue, this is a purely humanitarian issue," Lieutenant General Nadeem Ahmad, deputy chairman of Pakistan's Earthquake Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Authority, told AFP in an interview.

"For any government to come, whether it is PML-N or PPP or the present government, to withdraw its support from the reconstruction process would be ethically, morally deficient," he said.

The Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz of former premier Nawaz Sharif and the Pakistan People's Party of Benazir Bhutto, another ex-prime minister, both oppose Musharraf's bid to be re-elected in uniform.

The presidential election is on Saturday, two days before military ruler Musharraf is due to attend a commemorative service marking the second anniversary of the giant 7.6-magnitude quake.

The disaster, the deadliest in Pakistan's history, left 3.5 million people homeless, destroyed more than 600,000 homes, 6,000 schools and dozens of healthcare centres in Kashmir and northwest Pakistan.

General Ahmad, one of the most senior officers in Pakistan's powerful army, said there had been significant progress despite the political turmoil since Musharraf tried to sack the country's chief justice in March.

Musharraf has also faced a wave of Islamist violence sparked by the government raid of the Al-Qaeda-linked Red Mosque in Islamabad in July.

"Amid this (political) mess we recently made a presentation to the prime minister and then, just three days after, we made one to the president... they are fully committed," he said.

But he added that his "safety wall" was the continuing monitoring by international donors, who supply around 75 percent of the eight billion cost of reconstruction.

"The donors know what we are doing, so if the government even tries to vacillate on this subject I think they can be wrapped on the knuckles," he said.

Ahmad said the biggest progress was in housing the homeless.

Around 6,600 people were now living in tents, compared with 300,000 immediately after the disaster, he said. About a third of the homes destroyed had been rebuilt and most of the rest were "in advanced stages of completion."

Nearly a third of all health facilities have been rebuilt, most to a far higher standard before, the general said.

On schools, however, he admitted that work has been far slower with less than 100 schools out of 6,000 completed and 300 being built, although two universities have risen from the rubble.

One of the most controversial elements of the quake aid effort, the involvement of Islamic groups banned by the United States for links to militancy, has also changed in the two years since the disaster, he said.

"You hardly see them any more. On reconstruction, there's not a single religious organisation which is working with us," Ahmad said.

In fact the presence of the fundamentalist groups had become a source of tension, with locals burning down a radical-run hospital in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani Kashmir, after a clash in which a man was shot dead.

Amid growing opposition in Pakistan to Musharraf's role as army chief, the earthquake reconstruction body itself has been criticised for being a military dominated body.

Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999.

But General Ahmad said that if a new government wanted to change the set-up he would not mind so long as the work continues.

"They can change me if they don't like my face or say that 'he is a soldier so what has he to do with it.' That is quite alright,'" he added.

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