Pressure builds as Bhutto pushes ahead to endgame

Freed opposition leader makes U-turn over fired lawyers and calls on her supporters to march.
By Peter Beaumont

Sunday November 11, 2007
The Observer

President Pervez Musharraf began buckling to international pressure yesterday as Pakistan's attorney-general, Malik Mohammad Qayyum, suggested the state of emergency - announced eight days ago amid his 'post-modern coup' against his own regime - could be lifted within a month.

It came as the temporary house arrest imposed on former Prime Minister and opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, to prevent her from addressing a rally of tens of thousands of her supporters in Rawalpindi on Friday, was also lifted.

The latest concession by the President and chief of the army to the demands of Washington and London, which have been attempting to broker a power-sharing deal between Musharraf and Bhutto, comes after Musharraf suggested elections, originally planned for January, would go ahead by 15 February.

The reversals came as Bhutto aligned herself for the first time with deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammad Chaudhry. The move by Musharraf is unlikely to be enough to end days of protests - led by lawyers and journalists - over Musharraf's purging of the country's Supreme Court, which had sought to hold the regime accountable for corruption and human rights abuses.

The drama has given the impression of a series of contrived set-piece performances designed to bolster the individual standing of Musharraf and Bhutto. As such it has appeared to diplomats as an increasingly cynical game, divorced from the realities of a country being pulled apart by Islamist extremism, Musharraf's dictatorial tendencies and the political opportunism of Bhutto.

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