Calls for Musharraf to step down intensify

ISLAMABAD – Pakistan’s United States-allied president must resign before next month’s elections or the country could risk slipping into civil war, opposition leaders and a leading independent research institute said yesterday.

The calls came after the government pushed back polls to February 18 from the planned January 8 date due to unrest following the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. Bhutto’s death in a suicide bomb and gun attack plunged already volatile Pakistan deeper into crisis and stoked fears of political meltdown as the nation struggled to contain an explosion of Islamic militant violence.The government – which had initially ruled out the need for foreign involvement in the assassination probe – has been criticised over its security arrangements for Bhutto, who had claimed elements in the ruling party were trying to kill her.The party vehemently denies such a plot.Bhutto supporters have insisted that a United Nations probe would be the only way to reveal the truth behind her December 27 slaying.They dismissed President Pervez Musharraf’s recent announcement that Britain’s Scotland Yard will soon join the investigation.”The mist of confusion will be cleared only if the regime accepts the party’s demand for holding a UN inquiry into the assassination as was done in the case of Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri’s murder,” said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.”The regime has lost all credibility.Neither a domestic inquiry nor vague foreign involvement …would lay to rest the lingering doubts and suspicions.”The election delay also drew condemnation from Bhutto’s party and the other main opposition group, led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.They said, however, that they would run in the polls anyway – seemingly a boost to Musharraf’s hopes to engineer a democratic transition.The opposition urged Musharraf to resign.”Free and fair polls are impossible under his leadership,” said Javed Hashmi, a senior member of Sharif’s party.”Such a thing is unthinkable if he is there.”In a report on Bhutto’s murder, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group research institute called on the United States – which continues to support Musharraf to recognise him as “a serious liability, seen as complicit in the death of the popular politician” Bhutto.”It is time to recognise that democracy, not an artificially propped-up, defrocked, widely despised general has the best chance to provide stability,” the group’s Asia director, Robert Templer, said in a statement accompanying the report.Nampa -APBhutto’s death in a suicide bomb and gun attack plunged already volatile Pakistan deeper into crisis and stoked fears of political meltdown as the nation struggled to contain an explosion of Islamic militant violence.The government – which had initially ruled out the need for foreign involvement in the assassination probe – has been criticised over its security arrangements for Bhutto, who had claimed elements in the ruling party were trying to kill her.The party vehemently denies such a plot.Bhutto supporters have insisted that a United Nations probe would be the only way to reveal the truth behind her December 27 slaying.They dismissed President Pervez Musharraf’s recent announcement that Britain’s Scotland Yard will soon join the investigation.”The mist of confusion will be cleared only if the regime accepts the party’s demand for holding a UN inquiry into the assassination as was done in the case of Lebanese Premier Rafik Hariri’s murder,” said Farhatullah Babar, a spokesman for Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party.”The regime has lost all credibility.Neither a domestic inquiry nor vague foreign involvement …would lay to rest the lingering doubts and suspicions.”The election delay also drew condemnation from Bhutto’s party and the other main opposition group, led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.They said, however, that they would run in the polls anyway – seemingly a boost to Musharraf’s hopes to engineer a democratic transition.The opposition urged Musharraf to resign.”Free and fair polls are impossible under his leadership,” said Javed Hashmi, a senior member of Sharif’s party.”Such a thing is unthinkable if he is there.”In a report on Bhutto’s murder, the Brussels-based International Crisis Group research institute called on the United States – which continues to support Musharraf to recognise him as “a serious liability, seen as complicit in the death of the popular politician” Bhutto.”It is time to recognise that democracy, not an artificially propped-up, defrocked, widely despised general has the best chance to provide stability,” the group’s Asia director, Robert Templer, said in a statement accompanying the report.Nampa -AP