ISLAMABAD, PAKISTAN — Pakistan eased its crackdown on opponents Saturday, releasing opposition leader Benazir Bhutto from house arrest and saying it will lift martial law within a month. However, the government blocked a meeting between the deposed Supreme Court justice and Bhutto, who pledged to lead a 185-mile protest march.
Bhutto, apparently unbowed by her brief detention, said she would defy Musharraf’s ban on public gatherings and lead supporters on a march from the eastern city of Lahore to Islamabad on Tuesday.
“When the masses combine, the sound of their steps will suppress the sound of military boots,” Bhutto, a former prime minister, told around 100 journalists protesting a new media clampdown.
Musharraf insists he called the week-old state of emergency to help fight Islamic extremists who control swathes of territory near the Afghan border. But the main targets of his subsequent crackdown in this nation of 160 million people have been his most outspoken critics, including the increasingly independent courts and media.
Thousands of people have been arrested, TV news stations taken off air, and judges removed. On Saturday, three reporters from Britain’s Daily Telegraph newspaper were ordered to leave Pakistan for an editorial in the paper that used an expletive in an allusion to Musharraf, said Deputy Information Minister Tariq Azim.
A heavy security cordon around Bhutto’s Islamabad villa kept her under house arrest for 24 hours, but she was allowed to leave Saturday morning, meeting first with party colleagues and then addressing the journalists’ protest.
Addressing about 200 journalists through a loudspeaker Saturday, Bhutto said Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked militants were gaining ground in the country’s turbulent northwest, near the Afghan border. She also said Musharraf’s military-led government was about to crumble.
“This government is standing on its last foot,” she said, as dozens of her supporters scuffled briefly with police. “This government is going to go.”
Related
Bush, Rice defend Musharraf
CRAWFORD, TEXAS — President Bush offered perhaps his most extensive defense Saturday of Gen. Pervez Musharraf as an ally in the battle against Islamic extremists a week after the Pakistani leader declared martial law and began a crackdown on human-rights activists, lawyers and journalists.
Bush and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice made clear their continuing desire for Musharraf to hold elections and resign from the Pakistani army. But they mixed criticism with sympathy for what they termed his past efforts to cultivate democracy and help the U.S. go after al-Qaeda leaders in the border regions between Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“President Musharraf, right after the attacks on September the 11th, made a decision, and the decision was to stand with the United States against the extremists inside Pakistan,” Bush told reporters at his ranch.
Rice, in an interview released Saturday with The Dallas Morning News editorial board, described Musharraf as “someone with whom you can talk and reason.”
“He is someone who has tried to fight terrorism and has tried to unravel some of the extremist elements,” Rice said.
The Washington Post
