Musharraf Sets No Date to End Emergency Rule

By DAVID ROHDE and JANE PERLEZ
Published: November 12, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 11 — Gen. Pervez Musharraf, the Pakistani president, appeared to yield to intense American pressure on Sunday by restoring parliamentary elections in early January, but he said his emergency decree would last at least through then, immediately raising new questions about the vote’s legitimacy.

American officials and General Musharraf’s most important political rival, the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, endorsed his announcement as a small step. Still, any election held when basic civil liberties have been scrapped could create new credibility problems for General Musharraf, who has become increasingly isolated politically, and for Ms. Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan from a life in exile to participate in the electoral process.

At a combative news conference where General Musharraf sweated visibly, he defended his Nov. 3 emergency decree as the tough decision-making of a selfless leader intent on saving his country from anarchy.

“I found myself between a rock and a hard surface,” said General Musharraf, who mostly spoke in English. “I have no egos, personal egos and no personal ambitions to guard.”

He also said he was committed to holding elections by Jan. 9.
But many opposition politicians and Western diplomats called the election date a ruse to ease the outcry against General Musharraf’s seizure of additional power. They questioned how Pakistan could have fair elections when his security forces have arrested 2,500 civilians, suspended the Constitution, blocked independent news channels and banned public gatherings.

“It’s an attempt at a sop,” said one Western diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity in keeping with diplomatic protocol. “He’s looking to see whether simply announcing an election date will placate people.”

In another expansion of power, the government announced Saturday that it had amended an army law so that civilians could be prosecuted by military courts. The last time Pakistani civilians faced courts-martial was during the 11-year military dictatorship of Muhammad Zia ul-Haq, which ended in 1988.

In Baluchistan, the government said two politicians from the province, Mir Hasil Bizenjo and Yusuf Mastikhan, would be charged with treason for protesting emergency rule. Muhammad Ali Saif, a government legal adviser, said the burning of army uniforms by protesters would be prosecuted in military courts.

General Musharraf’s news conference was his first since proclaiming emergency powers, a move that has created global alarm about the political stability of Pakistan, a nuclear-armed country where Islamic militants have been expanding their reach. But General Musharaff rejected demands at home and abroad to set a date for ending the emergency decree, which has effectively placed Pakistan under martial law.

Defiant and increasingly authoritarian, General Musharraf said the decree was precisely what was needed to fight the growing Islamic terrorism threat and “ensure absolutely fair and transparent elections.”

Raising his voice at times and showing flashes of anger, the normally poised general, who seized power from the last democratically elected government in a military coup eight years ago, spoke a day after President Bush described him as an ally America needed in the fight against Al Qaeda. Some Pakistanis felt General Musharraf was emboldened by President Bush’s embrace.

The general insisted that he remained popular in Pakistan. But he refused to specify a time when he would end the state of emergency, a step that American officials, including Mr. Bush, have repeatedly asked General Musharraf to take.

“I cannot give a date,” General Musharraf said. “We are in a difficult situation, therefore I cannot give a date.”

He also declined to give a date for stepping down as chief of the military, a move that the United States and other Western countries have requested as a sign of his seriousness about a transition back to democracy.

In Washington, American officials said that General Musharraf should be given more time. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice praised the announcement of an election date but called for an end to the state of emergency.

“The key is to take this in steps,” she said on the ABC News program “This Week.” “And the first step is to make certain that the state of emergency ends, to make sure that people can compete for free and fair elections for the Parliament.”

Ms. Bhutto, who is supported by Washington in her return to politics here, echoed Ms. Rice’s tone. She called General Musharraf’s announcement a “first, positive step” at a news conference in Lahore, the eastern city where she has threatened to lead a protest march on Tuesday.

Ms. Bhutto also said that holding fair elections under the state of emergency “seems to be difficult.” But she said she had “not shut the door” to talks with the Pakistani leader, perpetuating speculation that she and General Musharraf may be privately negotiating a power-sharing agreement.
The events on Sunday appeared to again place in jeopardy a troubled effort by American officials to unite General Musharraf and Ms. Bhutto in an alliance to combat members of Al Qaeda and the Taliban who operate out of the country’s rugged northwest area adjoining Afghanistan.

Pakistani analysts say that General Musharraf’s popularity is plummeting and that a review of that idea is urgently needed.

“The U.S. administration is not willing to accept that Musharraf has messed up,” said Hasan-Askari Rizvi, a leading political and defense analyst based in Lahore. “They don’t want to do any new thinking on Pakistan. At the highest level, they stick to their own framework.”

The analysts also warned that Ms. Bhutto, who has been advised by American officials not to rule out an agreement with General Musharraf, might taint herself by associating too closely with him. If she were elected under emergency rule, they said, she too would likely lose popular support.
“Over time, this simmering resentment and cynicism about her and her deal will undermine whatever elections results there are,” said Rasul Bakhsh Rais, a political scientist at the Lahore University of Management Studies. “The new generations want some respect for the country, a Pakistan that is in the mainstream of modern civilization.”

Western diplomats and Pakistani analysts questioned several aspects of General Musharraf’s performance at the news conference. Many of his statements, they said, were inaccurate or contradictory, and his demeanor was unusually tense.

“It was a pure defense of all his actions,” said Ikram Sehgal, a retired military officer and friend of General Musharraf’s who flew the helicopter used by the general’s commando unit. “He was not the same confident general I used to know.”

Dressed in a blue blazer and gray slacks instead of his customary military uniform, General Musharraf insisted throughout the news conference that he had not violated the Constitution. Instead, his declaration of emergency and suspension of the Constitution put the “derailed part of democracy back on the rail.”

He called the emergency decree “a bitter pill to swallow” and “no doubt that this was the most difficult decision I have ever taken in my life.” But his sole motivation, he said, was to save Pakistan from continued “turmoil and shock and confusion.”

The Pakistani leader spent 10 minutes giving a detailed accounting of corruption and abuse of power allegations against the chief justice of the country’s Supreme Court, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, who became highly popular in recent months for challenging General Musharraf’s authority. “Nobody is above the law, ladies and gentlemen,” General Musharraf said.

He said he had replaced Mr. Chaudhry after the emergency declaration to regain control of a court whose decisions left the country’s police forces “totally demoralized and shattered” and terrorists “encouraged.” Knowing that the move would lead to international condemnation, he said he went ahead with it anyway.

“I needed to take a decision in the interest of this nation, to preserve this nation, to safeguard it,” he said. “And risk myself.”
Opposition politicians have said the president acted because the Supreme Court was days away from ruling on the legality of his re-election last month. The verdict had been widely expected to declare General Musharraf ineligible to serve another term.

The country’s election commission, whose chairman General Musharraf appointed, will provide “absolutely aboveboard” election rules, he said, and opposition figures detained over the last week would be released and allowed to run in elections. But no one would be allowed to “disturb law and order,” he said, or “create anarchy in Pakistan in the name of election, in the name of democracy.”

Resigning his military post would sharply reduce General Musharraf’s power, according to Pakistani analysts. And many believe he will delay giving up the post as long as possible.

Defending the closing of independent television news stations, General Musharraf said he favored an independent press, but wanted safeguards on “defamation by design, distortion of facts, projecting nontruths, humiliation.”

“If the media is going to make heroes of terrorists,” he said at one point, “God save our battle against terrorism.”

Raising his voice, General Musharraf lectured journalists seated in the presidential building, complaining that the West did not understand Pakistan. He said foreign journalists overestimated Ms. Bhutto’s political support in Pakistan and that you “cannot impose sudden change.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/12/wo...html?th&emc=th