Exiled Pakistan opposition pledge election return

By Ilya Kachaev

LONDON (Reuters) – The exiled leaders of Pakistan’s main
opposition parties pledged on Monday to return for 2007 general
elections to try to oust the country’s military ruler through
the ballot box.

Former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif have
been in exile for several years and President Pervez Musharraf,
who is widely expected to stay in office after the elections,
has vowed to block their return to power.

“We want to go back. We are very keen to go back and it is
our candid and considered view that the elections cannot be
held in a fair and free manner unless and until the two main
leaders go back to the country and participate in the election
campaign,” Sharif told Reuters television.

Bhutto and Sharif were bitter rivals in the 1990s but
formed the multi-party Alliance for the Restoration of
Democracy after Musharraf seized power in 1999 in a bloodless
coup. The two leaders were in London to discuss their election
strategy.

In a separate interview, Bhutto told Reuters television
that while Musharraf had put many obstacles in their path to
prevent their return, she believed there was a chance.

“I am planning to go back to Pakistan for the elections of
2007 and I will be discussing this with Mr Sharif,” she said.

Sharif was ousted by Musharraf and sent to exile in Saudi
Arabia, but he is now in London. Having lived in self-exile
since 1999, Bhutto faces graft charges in Pakistan and abroad
and faces arrest if she comes home.

U.S. SUPPORT

Musharraf abandoned the hardline Taliban in Afghanistan in
late 2001 to throw his weight behind the U.S.-led war on
terrorism, a move which brought him and his country credit
abroad but angered Islamic fundamentalists at home.

President George W. Bush now calls Musharraf his “buddy”
and Pakistan has captured and killed hundreds of al Qaeda
members since ending its support for the Taliban.

Bhutto and Sharif both said they were committed to fighting
terrorism and that Washington’s backing of Musharraf was
counter-productive to achieving long-term stability in
Pakistan.

“The United States should have its friendship not with one
individual in the country,” said Sharif. “It should make the
people of Pakistan its friends, otherwise this present (U.S.)
policy … is serving nothing else but alienating the 150
million people of the country,” he said.

Sharif said the opposition coalition had three demands:
that the 1973 constitution be restored, that the amendments to
the constitution made by Musharraf not be recognized and that
free and fair elections be held.

Bhutto said she believed their absence from the political
stage was playing into the hands of parties exploiting
religious and ethnic sentiments and that the only way to ensure
a moderate Pakistan was to restore a pluralistic democracy.

Analysts say the marginalization of Bhutto and Sharif has
allowed the Islamist opposition to exert greater influence in
Pakistan, and an Islamist alliance forms the largest opposition
group in parliament.

“The issue really is: where does Pakistan go in the future?
Is democracy, which has been promoted by the United States and
the international community as a way to undermine terrorism,
going to be applied to Pakistan or not?” she said.

“We believe that if this (political) vacuum continues then
a moderate Pakistan will be very difficult to achieve.”