Pakistan's Bhutto gambles on Musharraf

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Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto listens to a reporter's question during a meeting in central London recently.

ISLAMABAD, Aug 31 (Agencies): Exiled former leader Benazir Bhutto is gambling her future on a power-sharing deal with President Gen. Pervez Musharraf, hoping to revive a political dynasty. Bhutto is urging Musharraf to step down as military chief and drop corruption charges so she can come home and compete in parliamentary elections due by January. In return, the US-allied Musharraf gets to stay on for another five years as a powerful civilian president.
But joining hands with the unpopular general could cost the liberal opposition leader support and turn her audacious bid to win a third term as prime minister into a political suicide.
"For the first time in the history of Pakistan, from one end to the other end of Pakistan, there's complete unanimity:
No more dictatorship," said Ghulam Mustafa Khar, a senior politician who has broken with Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party over her talks with Musharraf.
"Now, Benazir stands up and says, 'Stay, Musharraf, stay!' ... That is something which is a nightmare for the people of Pakistan," he said.
Bhutto rejects that criticism. She and Musharraf also argue that joining forces will strengthen Pakistan's efforts to combat extremism and prevent the kind of political chaos that could prompt another burst of martial law.
"I am trying to convince (party colleagues) that the international community and the armed forces have confidence in Musharraf, and therefore we need to work out a solution" with him, she told The Washington Post recently.
But friends and foes warn that eight years of living abroad has left Bhutto out of touch with public sentiment.
Khar accused her of betraying her party's values by reaching out to a man who toppled Pakistan's last civilian government and has lost public support at home and abroad for recently trying to fire the country's top judge.
Khar was a close colleague of her father, party founder Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, who was hanged on murder charges in 1979 after his ouster in an earlier military coup.
By entering talks with Musharraf, Bhutto has offended the party's "long history of struggle against dictatorship," Khar said.
"This is one thing that I have not even visualized or dreamt," he said.