Former Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto hopes to forge an alliance with Islamists and other opposition parties to launch a campaign to force military president Pervez Musharraf from power.
U.S. ally Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, plunged the nuclear-armed country into crisis on November 3 when he declared emergency rule, suspended the constitution, rounded up thousands of opponents and curbed the media.
Bhutto, who had been in power-sharing talks with Musharraf for months, returned to Pakistan in October from 8 years of self-imposed exile, aiming to work with him on a transition to civilian rule.
But outraged by the crackdown, Bhutto said on Tuesday that her talks with Musharraf were over, and for the first time called on him to step down as president as well as army chief.
She also telephoned old rivals including Islamist alliance leader Qazi Hussain Ahmed and cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan, whom police detained on Wednesday, to urge a "coalition of interests", party officials said.
"She's trying to unite all political parties on a minimum agenda to return the country to true democracy," Latif Khosa, a senator and aide to Bhutto, told Reuters by telephone from the eastern city of Lahore.
"The minimum agenda is the ouster of General Musharraf and formation of a neutral government of national consensus to organise free and fair elections."
Musharraf, under pressure from allies and rivals to put the country back on a path to democracy, said at the weekend that general elections would take place by January 9. But he would not say when the constitution would be restored or the emergency lifted.
U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who last week warned against cutting aid to an "indispensable" ally, is due in Pakistan late this week to urge Musharraf to end the emergency.
But Musharraf has already rejected that call from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "I totally disagree with her," he told the New York Times on Tuesday. "The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner."
He also said Bhutto had no right to demand his resignation.
Musharraf told Britain's Sky News he had considered resigning but now felt he was the man to lead Pakistan to democracy. Sky, the last foreign news channel available on cable in Pakistan, went off the air shortly after broadcasting that news.
Pakistani shares ended 2.24 percent down on political worry while the rupee edged to a three-year low.
Wed Nov 14, 2007 10:19 pm
