Islamabad - Parliamentary elections will be held in Pakistan
in February, President Pervez Musharraf said Thursday amid a growing
outcry at his imposition of emergency rule.
While the pledge was rejected by opposition leader Benazir Bhutto
as insufficient, Musharraf appeared to be slowly heeding domestic and
international calls on him to restore democracy in the country of 160
million people.
'Elections will be held before February 15,' Musharraf told a
meeting of the National Security Council, a state body comprising the
country's top civilian and military leadership.
The current National Assembly lower house was due to be dissolved
as scheduled as it completes its five-year term on November 15, the
military ruler said.
Musharraf, an army general who came to power in a 1999 military
coup, later also reiterated to reporters his intention to step down
as army chief before starting a new term also lasting five years.
But he vowed to suppress the swell of demonstrations against his
declaration of emergency on Saturday and the accompanying suspension
of the constitution.
'All means will be used to control the protests,' Musharraf said,
adding that resistance to the government would not be tolerated.
Attorney General Malik Mohammed Qayyum said the emergency decree
will possibly be lifted in December.
Musharraf, a key ally in the US-led war on terror, won a further
term in a parliamentary vote on October 6. But the results were
withheld by the Supreme Court as it heard petitions challenging the
right of a serving military officer to contest elections.
He has justified emergency measures in the face of rising militant
violence and negative effects of an unruly judiciary, saying he could
not allow the country to 'commit suicide.'
It is widely thought that Musharraf proclaimed the emergency to
prevent a ruling against him. The move was accompanied by the sacking
of the top judges, including Chief Justice Iftikhar Chaudhry.
Addressing a press briefing in Islamabad, Bhutto, who heads the
liberal Pakistan People's Party (PPP), said the judges should all be
reinstated.
'We will accept the ruling on the president's re-election only if
it came from the real judiciary,' she said, referring to the 13
Supreme Court members who are currently under house arrest.
Lawyers, rights activists and opposition workers have condemned
the gamut of emergency measures and staged daily demonstrations
across the country.
Several people were injured Thursday when violence erupted at a
rally in the north-western city of Peshawar, and more arrests were
made there and in other parts of the country.
'Around 6,000 to 7,000 lawyers have so far been arrested and many
of them are being tortured in police custody,' Supreme Court Bar
Association spokesman Shaki Sultan told reporters in the capital.
Markets in several cities of the southern Sindh province remained
closed as traders observed a general strike against emergency rule,
while lawyers boycotted court proceedings across the country.
The protests are likely to grow in the coming days after Bhutto
said her party, the country's largest, would join the lawyers'
movement if the government did not hold elections by January 15 as
scheduled.
Bhutto, twice ousted from power on corruption charges, rejected
Musharraf's promise to hold the vote before February 15 as 'vague'
and demanded that he shed his uniform within a week.
Moreover, her dialogue with Musharraf would remain suspended as
long as the constitution was suspended, she said.
Despite months of backchannel talks with the president toward a
power-sharing agreement, Bhutto announced that she would launch her
resistance with a rally in Islamabad's twin city of Rawalpindi on
Friday.
She also threatened to stage a long march to the capital from the
city of Lahore on November 13.
As anger over the Pakistani leader's action spreads, the
international community has intensified pressure on his government to
restore democracy.
The Netherlands has already suspended financial aid to Pakistan
while other Western countries, including Britain and the United
States, said they were considering the option.
US President George W Bush telephoned Musharraf late Wednesday
urging him to hold the elections as scheduled in mid-January and also
to relinquish his post of army chief.
'I feel confident that President Musharraf heard the president's
message,' White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Thursday. 'We
would like to see him return to those elections as he said today he
would do. The uniform is still an issue.'
But Musharraf on Thursday shrugged off the objections, saying 'the
international community should not exert pressure on Pakistan.'
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
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