Earlier on Monday, Pakistan confirmed carrying out airstrikes on TTP militants in Afghanistan, amid heightened tensions between the two nations regarding recent terrorist attacks in troubled Pakistani cities.

As he starts his second term in office, the country faces a battered economic and political system with a greater need for reconciliation than any time before, and Zardari's innate ability to bring people with clashing ideas to the table would be put to the test.

A scion of the Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) and the husband of the late Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, Zardari, aged 68, is expected to succeed Dr. Arif Alvi.