NYT : Pakistan Talks Have Stalled, Former Premier Says

Pakistan Talks Have Stalled, Former Premier Says

By SALMAN MASOOD | October 4, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Oct. 3 — The opposition leader and former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said Wednesday that talks with President Pervez Musharraf over a power-sharing agreement have stalled.

Speaking in London, Ms. Bhutto also left open the possibility that her party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, would yet resign from parliament before presidential elections Saturday, according to the Pakistani news media.

Other opposition parties have already done so in an effort to undercut the legitimacy of the vote by the national and provincial assemblies, which General Musharraf is expected to win.

The unexpected announcement by Ms. Bhutto, who made her statements to reporters at a meeting of her party’s central executive committee, came a day after the government announced plans for a law that would give Ms. Bhutto amnesty from corruption cases.

On Wednesday Ms. Bhutto dismissed the government announcement as “disinformation.”

The conflicting signals were yet another measure of the unsettled state of Pakistan’s politics as both General Musharraf and Ms. Bhutto tussle for their future share of power.

Both sides have negotiated discreetly for months over an agreement that would allow General Musharraf to remain president and for Ms. Bhutto to return to politics in Pakistan, perhaps as prime minister, from her exile in London and Dubai.

Yet because the prospect of a deal sits badly with many Pakistanis, both the government and Ms. Bhutto have reasons to distance themselves publicly from any accord, whether tacit or explicit.

“We have done our best to negotiate a peaceful transition to democracy,” Ms. Bhutto told reporters Wednesday. “While many promises have been made, the goal posts keep being moved ahead.”

For their part, government officials also said that the path of power-sharing negotiations are not running smooth.

Tariq Azim Khan, the state minister for information, in a telephonic interview Wednesday evening said, “She has used a strong word, ‘stalled,’.” Mr. Khan said. ‘Talks are still ongoing. Nothing has been finalized.”

“There are certain issues that need to be resolved but I cannot go into the details,” Mr. Khan said. He said the government is not talking about giving Ms. Bhutto amnesty but national reconciliation by dropping certain corruption charges. “Most of the corruption cases in the 1990s were made on personal enmity.”

The democratic governments in the decades of 90s were marred by allegations of corruption, nepotism and mismanagement. Both Ms. Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister and opposition who was deported to Saudi Arabia last month after a stay of few hours in Pakistan, served twice as prime ministers in the 1990s.

Regarding Ms. Bhutto’s announcement that her party can resign before the presidential elections, Mr. Khan, the government information minister, said that her party was not going to vote for President Musharraf anyway. “So, how do the resignations affect the elections?”

But both sides need each other to an extent. Ms. Bhutto has been demanding a general amnesty for political leaders since 1988 and the scrapping of a ban on prime ministers running for a third term.

President Musharraf, for his part, needs the participation of her Pakistan Peoples Party in the Presidential election set for Oct.6 so it is not seen as being completely robbed of legitimacy.

President Musharraf, 64, is the midst of the most serious political and legal crisis since he took to power in a bloodless coup in 1999. His popularity has taken a plunge after March 9 when he unsuccessfully tried to remove the chief justice of the Supreme Court, which continues to hear opposition challenges against General Musharraf’.

The chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, constituted a ten-member bench to hear three petitions challenging the eligibility of President Musharraf to contest the presidential elections and the acceptance of his nomination papers by the Election Commission.

The two rival candidates a retired justice Wajihuddin and opposition politician Makhdoom Amin Fahim- have challenged Musharraf’s candidature.

Sardar Abdul Latif Khosa, who represents Makhdoom Amin Fahim, while talking to reporters outside the Supreme Court said: “We challenged the eligibility of general Musharraf for re-election before the EC with objections. But our stance was not heard there.”

Mr. Khosa reiterated the demand of opposition lawyers from the Supreme Court to postpone the presidential elections.

The hearing of the petitions was adjourned till Thursday.