Pakistan releases Benazir Bhutto ahead of US envoy's visit

FE Team | Published: November 17, 2007 00:00:00 | Updated: February 01, 2018 00:00:00

LAHORE, Nov 16 (Agencies): Authorities freed opposition leader Benazir Bhutto from house arrest Friday, hours before the arrival in Pakistan of a senior US official expected to urge the country's military leader to end emergency rule.President Gen. Pervez Musharraf pressed ahead with disputed plans for elections, despite the threat of an opposition boycott, by swearing in a caretaker administration.
Before dawn, the government withdrew a detention order that had confined Bhutto to a house in the eastern city of Lahore for three days. Scores of guards and barricades would remain for Bhutto's own protection but she was free to move around, said Zahid Abbas, a senior police official.
Bhutto immediately reiterated her call for Musharraf to quit power, and said his sidelining of moderate opponents had allowed the rise of Islamic extremism.
Do we want to deny this nation its true legitimate leadership and make way ... for extremist forces?" she asked reporters from behind a metal and barbed wire barrier across the driveway to her residence. "The West's interests lie in a democratic Pakistan."
Bhutto, a two-time former prime minister who returned from eight years in exile last month, was detained Tuesday to prevent her from leading a protest against Musharraf's Nov. 3 declaration of a state of emergency.
She has the highest profile among the thousands of political activists who have been detained in a government crackdown on dissent that sparked an outcry at home and abroad.
Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, insists he is still moving toward a restoration of democracy and civilian rule that Western governments believe could help stabilize the nuclear-armed country.
At a ceremony in the capital, Islamabad, a somber-faced Musharraf said the outgoing Cabinet should be proud of having helped turn around the economy and move Pakistan back toward democracy.
"I take pride in the fact that, being a man in uniform, I have actually introduced the essence of democracy in Pakistan, whether anyone believes it or not," the general said after installing the caretaker ministers at the presidential palace.
The interim government, headed by Musharraf loyalist and former Senate chairman Mohammedmian Soomro, is charged with guiding Pakistan through parliamentary elections due by Jan. 9.
Musharraf insists he declared the emergency to prevent judicial interference and the rising threat from militants linked to the Taliban and al-Qaida from derailing the vote.
On Friday, the army said it used US-supplied helicopters to pound militant positions in Swat, a mountain valley in the north where scores of heavily armed followers of a pro-Taliban cleric have been reported dead this week.
But he faces stiff criticism from countries including the United States, his key international backer, that the ballot cannot be fair unless restrictions on the opposition and the media are ended.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte was due in Pakistan later Friday to discuss the deepening political crisis. He was expected to hold most of his talks Saturday, though it was unclear whether he would meet with Bhutto.
US President George W. Bush "wants the state of emergency to be lifted. And it is up to President Musharraf. He has the responsibility to help restore democracy to the country," White House press secretary Dana Perino said.
Bhutto is calling on opposition parties, who deride Musharraf as a dictator trying to shore up his own fading power, to form a national unity government to replace him and organize the elections.
Exiled former leader Nawaz Sharif has accepted the idea but told AP on Thursday that the priority was to get Supreme Court judges ousted by Musharraf reinstated. The court had called for Sharif to be allowed to return.