Increasingly alarmed at the turn of events in Pakistan, US President George Bush has dispatched Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte to convince Pakistan’s President, General Pervez Musharraff, to end emergency rule and restore stability.
Meanwhile, former prime minister and current opposition leader Benazir Bhutto remains under house arrest in Lahore, where her house has been padlocked and surrounded by thousands of riot police, trucks, metal barricades and barbed wire.
She has called for Gen. Musharraff to resign because he has plunged Pakistan into a crisis that she says negates the possibility of fair elections and power-sharing.
“I am calling for Gen. Musharraf to step down, to quit, to leave,” said Ms Bhutto. “Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country. We cannot afford this kind of chaos and instability. Pakistan needs stability. I could not serve as prime minister with Gen. Musharraf as president. I wish I could.”
Ms Bhutto’s comments mark another setback for the US, who had worked to broker a Musharraff-Bhutto powersharing agreement to ensure a moderate democratic government and to prevent the formation of an Islamic state in a nuclear-armed nation believed to be harboring Osama bin Laden and ‘Al Qaeda Central’ leadership.
Mr Negroponte is expected to arrive in Islamabad on Friday to meet with Gen. Musharraff to make clear US opposition to the suspension of the country’s constitution and the jailing of political opponents.
Gen. Musharraff has already rejected a similar appeal by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who spoke to Gen. Musharraff by phone days after he declared emergency rule.
“I totally disagree with her,” said Gen. Musharraf. “The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner.”
Several jailed opposition politicians including Ms Bhutto have vowed to boycott elections due to be held on January 9 if the state of emergency is not lifted to restore media freedoms and allow open campaigning.
White House spokeswoman Dana Perino says the Bush administration is committed to getting Pakistan back on the track of democracy. “We want people to be able to protest peacefully, to be able to have an open society where they can speak their mind,” she said.
Yet she also acknowledged that, “The situation is evolving almost by the hour.”
