Pakistan to Hold Election in Mid-January

Azhar Masood, Arab News

ISLAMABAD, 6 November 2007 — Under mounting Western pressure, the Pakistan government yesterday announced elections in mid-January.

Attorney-General Malik Abdul Qayyum said Pakistan’s national and provincial assemblies will be dissolved in 10 days. “It has been decided there would be no delay in the election and by Nov. 15, these assemblies will be dissolved and the election held within the next 60 days,” Abdul Qayyum said.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz earlier said outstanding cases lying with the Supreme Court, including challenges to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf’s re-election by Parliament last month while still army chief, need to be concluded.

“We don’t want to disrupt the election process. We want a free election,” Aziz said.

The government announcement came after the United States and Britain harshly criticized Musharraf for suspending the constitution and demanded that he hold elections as scheduled. The Netherlands froze aid to Pakistan in response to Musharraf’s declaration of emergency on Saturday and UN human rights chief Louise Arbor sharply criticized the imposition of emergency and the imprisonment of judges and politicians.

The United States said it had suspended defense talks with Pakistan and Defense Secretary Robert Gates demanded the country return swiftly to democracy.

Eric Edelman, US undersecretary of defense for policy, had been due to lead a US delegation for two days of annual high-level defense talks with Pakistan beginning today. But the talks will not happen until political conditions improve, Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell said in Beijing where he was accompanying Gates.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said that Musharraf should leave his military post and that the country should move toward elections under the constitution. “President Musharraf has said that he will take off his uniform. That would be an important step,” Rice told a news conference during a visit to the West Bank.

Musharraf told foreign diplomats in comments broadcast on state-run Pakistan Television that he was determined to quit as army chief and become a civilian president.

Pakistani police used tear gas and batons to crush protests by lawyers against the emergency rule. In a sign of the uncertainty gripping the country, the government was forced to deny swirling rumors that Musharraf had been placed under house arrest by his own armed forces. Dozens of lawyers were wounded and hundreds more arrested as protests erupted outside courtrooms in a number of cities, the first major show of public dissent since Saturday.

Officials said 1,500 people had been arrested across the country since the weekend. “Police have detained potential troublemakers, law-breakers and those who defied a ban on rallies,” Interior Ministry spokesman Javed Iqbal Cheema said.

The biggest protest was in Lahore, where lawyers with bleeding head wounds were bundled into vans after police fired tear gas at around 1,000 protesters outside the high court.

In Karachi, police and paramilitary soldiers sealed off the high court and charged at lawyers who were outside the building, detaining another 100. Clashes were also reported in Rawalpindi, Multan and Peshawar.

Police raided the office of the mass-selling Awam newspaper in Karachi and arrested several journalists. The camera of a photographer was smashed during a protest in Quetta.

— Additional input from agencies