NYT : Pakistan Struggles Against Militants Trained by Agency

Pakistan Struggles Against Militants Trained by Agency

By CARLOTTA GALL and DAVID ROHDE | January 15, 2008

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — Pakistan’s premier military intelligence agency has lost control of some of the networks of Pakistani militants it has nurtured since the 1980s, and is now suffering the violent blowback of that policy, two former senior intelligence officials and other officials close to the agency say.

As the military has moved against them, the militants have turned on their former handlers, the officials said. Joining with other extremist groups, they have battled Pakistani security forces and helped militants carry out a record number of suicide attacks last year, including some aimed directly at army and intelligence units as well as prominent political figures, possibly even Benazir Bhutto.

The growing strength of the militants, many of whom now express support for Al Qaeda’s global jihad, presents a grave threat to Pakistan’s security, as well as NATO efforts to push back the Taliban in Afghanistan. American officials have begun to weigh more robust covert operations to go after Al Qaeda in the lawless border areas because they are so concerned that the Pakistani government is unable to do so.

The unusual disclosures regarding Pakistan’s leading military intelligence agency — Inter-Services Intelligence, or the ISI — emerged in interviews last month with former senior Pakistani intelligence officials. The disclosures confirm some of the worst fears, and suspicions, of American and Western military officials and diplomats.

The interviews, a rare glimpse inside a notoriously secretive and opaque agency, offered a string of other troubling insights likely to refocus attention on the ISI’s role as Pakistan moves toward elections on Feb. 18 and a battle for control of the government looms:

¶One former senior Pakistani intelligence official, as well as other people close to the agency, acknowledged that the ISI led the effort to manipulate Pakistan’s last national election in 2002, and offered to drop corruption cases against candidates who would back President Pervez Musharraf.

A person close to the ISI said Mr. Musharraf had now ordered the agency to ensure that the coming elections were free and fair, and denied that the agency was working to rig the vote. But the acknowledgment of past rigging is certain to fuel opposition fears of new meddling.

¶The two former high-ranking intelligence officials acknowledged that after Sept. 11, 2001, when President Musharraf publicly allied Pakistan with the Bush administration, the ISI could not rein in the militants it had nurtured for decades as a proxy force to exert pressure on India and Afghanistan. After the agency unleashed hard-line Islamist beliefs, the officials said, it struggled to stop the ideology from spreading.

¶Another former senior intelligence official said dozens of ISI officers who trained militants had come to sympathize with their cause and had had to be expelled from the agency. He said three purges had taken place since the late 1980s and included the removal of three ISI directors suspected of being sympathetic to the militants.

None of the former intelligence officials who spoke to The New York Times agreed to be identified when talking about the ISI, an agency that has gained a fearsome reputation for interfering in almost every aspect of Pakistani life. But two former American intelligence officials agreed with much of what they said about the agency’s relationship with the militants.

So did other sources close to the ISI, who admitted that the agency had supported militants in Afghanistan and Kashmir, although they said they had been ordered to do so by political leaders.

The former intelligence officials appeared to feel freer to speak as Mr. Musharraf’s eight years of military rule weakened, and as a power struggle for control over the government looms between Mr. Musharraf and opposition political parties.

The officials were interviewed before the assassination of Ms. Bhutto, the opposition leader, on Dec. 27. Since then, the government has said that Pakistani militants linked to Al Qaeda are the foremost suspects in her killing. Her supporters have accused the government of a hidden hand in the attack.

While the author of Ms. Bhutto’s death remains a mystery, the interviews with the former intelligence officials made clear that the agency remained unable to control the militants it had fostered.

The threat from the militants, the former intelligence officials warned, is one that Pakistan is unable to contain. “We could not control them,” said one former senior intelligence official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “We indoctrinated them and told them, ‘You will go to heaven.’ You cannot turn it around so suddenly.”

The Context

After 9/11, the Bush administration pressed Mr. Musharraf to choose a side in fighting Islamist extremism and to abandon Pakistan’s longtime support for the Taliban and other Islamist militants.

In the 1990s, the ISI supported the militants as a proxy force to contest Indian-controlled Kashmir, the border territory that India and Pakistan both claim, and to gain a controlling influence in neighboring Afghanistan. In the 1980s, the United States supported militants, too, funneling billions of dollars to Islamic fighters battling Soviet forces in Afghanistan through the ISI, vastly increasing the agency’s size and power.

Publicly, Mr. Musharraf agreed to reverse course in 2001, and he has received $10 billion in aid for Pakistan since then in return. In an interview in November, he vehemently defended the conduct of the ISI, an agency that, according to American officials, was under his firm control for the last eight years while he served as both president and army chief.

Mr. Musharraf dismissed criticism of the ISI’s relationship with the militants. He cited the deaths of 1,000 Pakistani soldiers and police officers in battles with the militants in recent years — as well as several assassination attempts against himself — as proof of the seriousness of Pakistan’s counterterrorism effort.

“It is quite illogical if you think those people who have suffered 1,000 people dead, and I who have been attacked thrice or four or five times, that I would be supportive towards Taliban, towards Al Qaeda,” Mr. Musharraf said. “These are ridiculous things that discourages and demoralizes.”

But some former American intelligence officials have argued that Mr. Musharraf and the ISI never fully jettisoned their militant protégés, and instead carried on a “double-game.” They say Mr. Musharraf cooperated with American intelligence agencies to track down foreign Qaeda members while holding Taliban commanders and Kashmiri militants in reserve.

In order to undercut major opposition parties, he wooed religious conservatives, according to analysts. And instead of carrying out a crackdown, Mr. Musharraf took half-measures.

“I think he would make a decision when a situation arises,” said Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani military analyst, referring to militants openly confronting the government. “But before that he would not alienate any side.”

There is little dispute that Pakistan’s crackdown on the militants has been at best uneven, but key sources interviewed by The Times disagreed on why.

Most Western officials in Pakistan say they believe, as Pakistani officials, including President Musharraf, insist, that the agency is well disciplined, like the army, and is in no sense a rogue or out-of-control organization acting contrary to the policies of the leadership.

A senior Western military official in Pakistan said that if the ISI was covertly aiding the Taliban, the decision would come from the top of the government, not the agency. “That’s not an ISI decision,” the official said. “That’s a government-of-Pakistan decision.”

But former Pakistani intelligence officials insisted that Mr. Musharraf had ordered a crackdown on all militants. It was never fully carried out, however, because of opposition within his government and within ISI, they said.

One former senior intelligence official said that some officials in the government and the ISI thought the militants should be held in reserve, as insurance against the day when American and NATO forces abandoned the region and Pakistan might again need them as a lever against India.

“We had a school of thought that favored retention of this capability,” the former senior intelligence official said.

Some senior ministers and officials in Mr. Musharraf’s government sympathized with the militants and protected them, former intelligence officials said. Still others advised a go-slow approach, fearing a backlash against the government from the militants.

When arrests were ordered, the police refused to carry them out in some cases until they received written orders, believing the militants were still protected by the ISI, as they had been for years.

Inside the ISI, there was division as well. One part of the ISI hunted down militants, the officials said, while another continued to work with them. The result was confusion.

In interviews in 2002, Kashmiri militants in Pakistan said they had been told by the government to maintain a low profile and wait. But as Pakistani military operations in the tribal areas intensified, along with airstrikes by C.I.A.-operated drones, militant groups there issued highly charged and sometimes exaggerated accounts of women and children being killed.

The first suicide bombing attack on a military target outside the tribal areas came days after an airstrike on a madrasa in the tribal area of Bajaur in October 2006 killed scores of people.

Another turning point came last July when Pakistani forces stormed the Red Mosque in Islamabad, where militants had armed themselves in a compound less than a mile from ISI headquarters and demanded the imposition of Islamic law. Government officials said that more than 100 people died. The militants have insisted that thousands did.

Several weeks later, militants carried out the first direct attacks on ISI employees. Suicide bombers twice attacked buses ferrying agency employees, killing 18 on Sept. 4 and 15 more on Nov. 24. According to Pakistani analysts, the attacks signaled that enraged militants had turned on their longtime patrons.

The Militant

One militant leader, Maulana Masood Azhar, typifies how extremists once trained by the ISI have broken free of the agency’s control, turned against the government and joined with other militants to create powerful new networks.

In 2000, Mr. Azhar received support from the ISI when he founded Jaish-e-Muhammad, or Army of Muhammad, a Pakistani militant group fighting Indian forces in Kashmir, according to Robert Grenier, who served as the Central Intelligence Agency station chief in Islamabad from 1999 to 2002. The ISI intermittently provided training and operational coordination to such groups, he said, but struggled to fully control them.

Mr. Musharraf banned Jaish-e-Muhammad and detained Mr. Azhar after militants carried out an attack on the Indian Parliament building in December 2001. Indian officials accused Jaish-e-Muhammad and another Pakistani militant group of masterminding the attack. After India massed hundreds of thousands of troops on Pakistan’s border, Mr. Musharraf vowed in a nationally televised speech that January to crack down on all militants in Pakistan.

“We will take strict action against any Pakistani who is involved in terrorism inside the country or abroad,” he said. Two weeks later, a British-born member of Mr. Azhar’s group, Ahmed Omar Sheikh, kidnapped Daniel Pearl, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal who was beheaded by his captors. Mr. Sheikh surrendered to the ISI, the agency that had supported Jaish-e-Muhammad, and was sentenced to death for the kidnapping.

After Mr. Pearl’s killing, Pakistani officials arrested more than 2,000 people in a crackdown. But within a year, Mr. Azhar and most of the 2,000 militants who had been arrested were freed. “I never believed that government ties with these groups was being irrevocably cut,” said Mr. Grenier, now a managing director at Kroll, a risk consulting firm.

At the same time, Pakistan seemingly went “through the motions” when it came to hunting Taliban leaders who fled into Pakistan after the 2001 American invasion of Afghanistan, he said.

Encouraged by the United States, the Pakistanis focused their resources on arresting senior Qaeda members, he said, which they successfully did from 2002 to 2005. Since then, arrests have slowed as Al Qaeda and other militant groups have become more entrenched in the tribal areas.

Asked in 2006 why the Pakistani government did not move against the leading Taliban commander Jalaluddin Haqqani, and his son Sirajuddin, who are based in the tribal areas and have long had links with Al Qaeda, one senior ISI official said it was because Pakistan needed to retain some assets of its own.

That policy haunts Mr. Musharraf and the United States, according to American and Pakistani analysts. Today Pakistan’s tribal areas are host to a lethal stew of foreign Qaeda members, Uzbek militants, Taliban, ISI-trained Pakistani extremists, disgruntled tribesmen and new recruits.

The groups carried out a record number of suicide bombings in Pakistan and Afghanistan last year and have been tied to three major terrorist plots in Britain and Germany since 2005.

Mr. Azhar, who once served his ISI mentors in Kashmir, is thought to be hiding in the tribal area of Bajaur, or nearby Dir, and fighting Pakistani security forces, according to one former intelligence official. Militants who took part in the Red Mosque siege in Islamabad in July were closely affiliated with Mr. Azhar’s group. This fall, his group fielded fighters in the Swat Valley, the famous tourist spot, where the militants presented a challenge of new proportions to the government, seizing several districts and mounting battles against Pakistani forces that left scores dead.

One militant from a banned sectarian group who joined Mr. Azhar’s group, Qari Zafar, now trains insurgents in South Waziristan on how to rig roadside bombs and vests for suicide bombings, according to the former intelligence official.

Cooperation against the Taliban fighting in Afghanistan has improved since 2006, and three senior Taliban figures have been caught, according to Western officials and sources close to the ISI. Yet doubts remain about the Pakistani government’s intentions.

Senior provincial ISI officials continue to meet with high-level members of the Taliban in the border provinces, according to one Western diplomat. “It is not illogical to surmise that cooperation is on the agenda, and not just debriefing,” the diplomat said.

“There are groups they know they have lost control of,” the Western diplomat added. But the government moved only against those groups that have attacked the Pakistani state, the diplomat said, adding, “It seems very difficult for them to write them off.”

The Agency Now

Western officials say that before Mr. Musharraf resigned as army chief in December, he appointed a loyalist to run the ISI and appears determined to retain power over the agency even as a civilian president.

“For as long as he can, Musharraf will keep trying to control these organizations,” a Western diplomat said. “I don’t think we should expect this man to become an elder statesman as we know it.”

That puts Mr. Musharraf’s successor as army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, who headed the ISI from 2004 to 2007, in a potentially pivotal position. General Kayani, a pro-American moderate, is loyal to Mr. Musharraf to a point, according to retired officers. But he will abandon him if he thinks Mr. Musharraf’s actions are significantly undermining the standing of the Pakistani army.

Mr. Musharraf will maintain control over the agency as long as his interests coincide with General Kayani’s, they said, while the new civilian prime minister who emerges from February’s elections is likely to have far less authority over the agency. Opposition political parties already accuse the agency of meddling in next month’s election. The Western diplomat called the ISI “the army’s dirty bag of tricks.”

Since Ms. Bhutto’s assassination, members of her party have accused government officials, including former ISI agents, of having a hidden hand in the attack or of knowing about a plot and failing to inform Ms. Bhutto.

American experts played down the chances of a government conspiracy against Ms. Bhutto. They also said it was unlikely that low-level or retired officers working alone or with militants carried out the attack.

But nearly half of Pakistanis said in a recent poll that they suspected that government agencies or pro-government politicians had assassinated Ms. Bhutto. Such suspicion stems from decades of interference in elections and politics by the ISI, according to analysts, as well as a high level of domestic surveillance, intimidation and threats to journalists, academics and human rights activists, which former intelligence officials also acknowledged.

Pakistani and American experts say that distrust speaks to the urgent need to reform a hugely powerful intelligence agency that Pakistan’s military rulers have used for decades to suppress political opponents, manipulate elections and support militant groups.

“Pakistan would certainly be better off if the ISI were never used for domestic political purposes,” said Mr. Grenier, the former C.I.A. Islamabad station chief. “That goes without saying.”

Pakistani analysts and Western diplomats argue that the country will remain unstable as long as the ISI remains so powerful and so unaccountable. The ISI has grown more powerful in each period of military rule, they said.

Civilian leaders, including Mrs. Bhutto, could not resist using it to secure their political aims, but neither could they control it. And the army continues to rely on the ISI for its own foreign policy aims, particularly battling India in Kashmir and seeking influence in Afghanistan.

“The question is, how do you change that?” asked one Western diplomat. “Their tentacles are everywhere.”

IHT : Most Pakistanis want Musharraf to quit, poll shows

Most Pakistanis want Musharraf to quit, poll shows

By David Rohde and Carlotta Gall | Thursday, December 13, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan: The first comprehensive public opinion poll conducted in Pakistan since President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency last month has found that 67 percent of Pakistanis want him to resign immediately and that 70 percent say his government does not deserve re-election.

The poll suggests that Musharraf will have to engage in substantial vote rigging to have the government of his choice win national elections on Jan. 8.

The survey also calls into question the view in the United States of Musharraf as a leader who can effectively rule Pakistan and deliver in the campaign against terrorism. And it suggests that civil unrest could erupt if Musharraf were to win the election.

The poll was conducted by the International Republican Institute, a nonprofit group based in Washington that is affiliated with the Republican Party and promotes democracy abroad. The results were provided to The New York Times before their release on Thursday.

Pakistan's two main opposition leaders, Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, each a former prime minister, are already accusing Musharraf of fixing the vote in advance and vowing protests if he prevails.

"If elections are rigged, we are going to need to be in a position like the people of Ukraine were, to protest those elections," Bhutto said at a news conference last week. "A plan is under way to rig the elections, and to stop progress towards democracy."

On Nov. 3, Musharraf declared a state of emergency, abrogated Pakistan's Constitution, fired the Supreme Court, blacked out the independent news channels and arrested more than 5,000 of his opponents. Since then, most prisoners have been released and Musharraf has resigned from his post as army chief, but his actions have "polarized" Pakistani society, according to the poll.

Two-thirds of those surveyed "expressed anger at the current state of affairs, desired change and were anti-Musharraf," the institute said. And one third "remained supportive of President Musharraf and were positive about the condition of the country."

An American-backed proposal that Musharraf form a government with Bhutto also appears to be deeply unpopular. Sixty percent of Pakistanis polled opposed such a deal, which American officials had hoped would bolster support for Musharraf.

Instead, 58 percent said they would support a "Grand Opposition Alliance" among Bhutto, Sharif and other parties against Musharraf, a former general who seized power in a 1999 coup. Fifty-six percent said the army, which has intermittently ruled Pakistan since it won independence from Britain 60 years ago, should have no role in civilian government.

If Bhutto and Sharif do not form an alliance, the country appears to be headed toward a hung Parliament, according to the poll. Asked which party they would support in elections, 30 percent of those polled said they would support Bhutto's party, 25 percent named Sharif's and 23 percent favored Musharraf's.

The poll was based on the responses of 3,520 randomly selected men and women from across Pakistan, according to the institute. It has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.69 percentage points.

"If they did unite, they would put themselves in a much stronger position," said Robert Varsalone, the institute's country director, referring to Bhutto and Sharif.

But the two are bitter personal rivals and, according to Pakistani political analysts, unlikely to be able to form a government together. They predicted continued political instability if no party wins the vote decisively, with Musharraf, Bhutto and Sharif all vying to cobble together governing coalitions with smaller parties.

The poll also identified several worrying trends for Musharraf's party. Seventy percent of Pakistanis said they felt the country was headed in the wrong direction and 51 percent said their personal economic situation had worsened. And Sharif, who returned to Pakistan from exile two weeks ago, appears to be drawing center-right voters away from Musharraf, a key source of his support.

Pakistani and Western observers warn that clear signs already exist that Musharraf and his supporters are manipulating the election. They fear a repeat of nationwide elections won by Musharraf's party in 2002.

"It was Pakistan's most rigged election," said Ijaz Gilani, chairman of Gallup Pakistan, an Islamabad-based polling and research firm. "Never in our history have we had so much pre-poll and post-poll rigging."

The irregularities were numerous, according to the opposition and observers, including education requirements that knocked opposition candidates off the ballot and the severe gerrymandering of districts in favor of Musharraf's supporters. Long before the race, Bhutto and Sharif had been forced into exile, weakening the ability of their parties to function.

As the race approached, Musharraf took over much of Sharif's party, the Pakistan Muslim League. He also passed a requirement that all candidates have a university degree, a measure that knocked some of Bhutto's and Sharif's strongest candidates off the ballot.

Ikram Sehgal, a defense analyst and retired army pilot who runs a security company, said government and intelligence officials also engaged in "post-poll rigging," pressing successful candidates from other parties to defect.

"They would say: 'You have not paid your taxes, here are the bills. These are the corruption cases against you,' " he said.

This year, the country's election commission, judiciary and local governments are all run by officials loyal to Musharraf. Analysts say the president has used the state of emergency to create an electoral playing field that favors his candidates, constraining media coverage, public rallies and the length of the campaign.

The dismissal and continued detention of Supreme Court and High Court judges "sent a very strong signal" that election results could not be appealed, according an election observer who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Instead of the standard 60-day campaign, candidates will have only three weeks after emergency rule, which is expected to end this weekend. Restrictions will remain against rallies and processions, which are only permitted in proscribed places.

And Musharraf has muzzled the country's news media, barring live coverage of election rallies and popular political talk shows. Under a new ordinance unilaterally enacted by Musharraf under emergency rule, television journalists face up to three years in jail for broadcasting "anything which defames or brings into ridicule the head of state."

In a letter to stations on Monday, government officials accused them of airing live telephone calls from the public that contained "baseless propaganda against Pakistan and incite people to violence." If the practice continued, they said, station owners and journalists could be jailed.

Fears also exist that government resources are being used in favor of election candidates. The nazim, or district mayor, who controls the local government officials running polling stations, can oversee rigging, Sehgal said. Opposition parties have demanded they be replaced by neutral officials during the election campaign.

Sehgal also said law enforcement agencies could shutter polling stations where opposition candidates were expected to do well on the pretext that there were disturbances. "The police find out where they could lose a polling station and they close it early," he said. "And they put the votes of their party in the box."

And after ballots are cast, there are concerns about how the vote will be tallied, according to the election observer. Political party observers may be barred from election centers where results from across the constituency will be totaled. "It's a huge deficiency," he said.

On Wednesday, Aitzaz Ahsan, a top lawyer who has been under house arrest during the state of emergency was imposed, announced that he was pulling out of the election, in deference to the lawyers who have sought a boycott of elections until the former Supreme Court is restored.

He and other lawyers predict the vote will be rigged. Sehgal estimates that Pervez Elahi, the former chief minister of Punjab Province and the leading candidate from Musharraf's party, can secure 100 seats in Punjab by virtue of his control of government machinery there.

Without rigging, he would only get 45 to 50 seats, he said. Gilani said his polling has shown 20 percent support for Musharraf's party after the emergency.

NYT : Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban

Foreign Fighters of Harsher Bent Bolster Taliban

By DAVID ROHDE | October 30, 2007

GARDEZ, Afghanistan — Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer.

When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives.

Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.

The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.

They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.

Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.

Their growing numbers point to the worsening problem of lawlessness in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which they use as a base to train alongside militants from Al Qaeda who have carried out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe, according to Western diplomats.

“We’ve seen an unprecedented level of reports of foreign-fighter involvement,” said Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “They’ll threaten people if they don’t provide meals and support.”

In interviews in southern and eastern Afghanistan, local officials and village elders also reported having seen more foreigners fighting alongside the Taliban than in any year since the American-led invasion in 2001.

In Afghanistan, the foreigners serve as mid-level commanders, and train and finance local fighters, according to Western analysts. In Pakistan’s tribal areas, they train suicide bombers, create roadside-bomb factories and have vastly increased the number of high-quality Taliban fund-raising and recruiting videos posted online.

Gauging the exact number of Taliban and foreign fighters in Afghanistan is difficult, Western officials and analysts say. At any given time, the Taliban can field up to 10,000 fighters, they said, but only 2,000 to 3,000 are highly motivated, full-time insurgents.

The rest are part-time fighters, young Afghan men who have been alienated by government corruption, who are angry at civilian deaths caused by American bombing raids, or who are simply in search of cash, they said. Five to 10 percent of full-time insurgents — roughly 100 to 300 combatants — are believed to be foreigners.

Western diplomats say recent offers from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to negotiate with the Taliban are an effort to split local Taliban moderates and Afghans who might be brought back into the fold from the foreign extremists.

But that effort may face an increasing challenge as foreigners replace dozens of midlevel and senior Taliban who, Western officials say, have been killed by NATO and American forces.

At the same time, Western officials said the reliance on foreigners showed that the Taliban are running out of midlevel Afghan commanders. “That’s a sure-fire sign of desperation,” General Champoux said.

Seth Jones, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, was less sanguine, however, calling the arrival of more foreigners a dangerous development. The tactics the foreigners have introduced, he said, are increasing Afghan and Western casualty rates.

“They play an incredibly important part in the insurgency,” Mr. Jones said. “They act as a force multiplier in improving their ability to kill Afghan and NATO forces.”

Western officials said the foreigners are also increasingly financing younger Taliban leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas who have closer ties to Al Qaeda, like Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed. The influence of older, more traditional Taliban leaders based in Quetta, Pakistan, is diminishing.

“We see more and more resources going to their fellow travelers,” said Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan. “The new Taliban commanders are younger and younger.”

In the southern provinces of Oruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand, Afghan villagers recently described two distinct groups of Taliban fighters. They said “local Taliban” allowed some development projects. But “foreign Taliban” — usually from Pakistan — threatened to kill anyone who cooperated with the Afghan government or foreign aid groups.

Hanif Atmar, the Afghan education minister, said threats from foreign Taliban have closed 40 percent of the schools in southern Afghanistan. He said many local Taliban oppose the practice, but foreign Taliban use brutality and cash to their benefit.

“That makes our situation terribly complicated,” Mr. Atmar said. “Because they bring resources with them, their agenda takes precedence.”

Large groups of Pakistani militants operate in southern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials. In the east, more Arab and Uzbek fighters are present.

Mr. Bataloff, the Russian arrested in a burqa, insists he is a religious student who traveled to Pakistan last year to learn more about his new faith. In an hourlong interview in an Afghan jail in Kabul, he said his interest in Islam blossomed three years ago when he was living in Siberia.

“First, I heard from TV, radio and newspapers about Islam,” he said in Russian. “I found Islam had a lot of good things, especially that Islam respects all prophets, including Jesus.”

But he declined to describe many details of his trip and grew angry when asked about his personal background. “Homicide and suicide is not allowed in any religion,” he said, when asked about the allegations against him. “Why are you asking me these questions?”

Mr. Bataloff said he grew up in Siberia, but would not identify his hometown or region. He said he could not remember the names of the Pakistanis he met or the two Afghan men who drove the pickup truck.

He said he decided to go to a predominantly Muslim country last fall to study Islam and learn about “the morals, the customs, the ethics and the literature.” He flew alone from Russia to Iran, he said, and met a Russian-speaking “guide” in the airport.

After spending 10 days in Iran, he crossed into Pakistan and traveled to North Waziristan, a remote tribal area that is a longtime Taliban and Qaeda stronghold. There, he spent a year living and studying in a small mosque in Mir Ali.

Pakistani security officials say the Islamic Jihad Union, a terrorist group led by militants from Uzbekistan, operates a training camp in Mir Ali.

[In mid-October, in some of the heaviest fighting in four years, the Pakistani military said 50 foreign fighters were among 200 militants reported killed in three days of clashes around Mir Ali. The dead foreigners were said to include mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks, as well as some Arabs, the army said.]

Some of the suspects arrested in a failed bombing plot in Germany in September received training in the tribal areas, according to German officials. Several men involved in the July 2005 London transit bombings and a failed August 2006 London airliner plot did as well.

Mr. Bataloff said he met no foreign militants in his 10 months in the tribal areas. But American military officials said he had told interrogators that he had attended a terrorist training camp in North Waziristan. He said local militants forced him to go to the camp and taught him how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle, the officials said.

“I didn’t have any specific teacher,” he said, when asked about Pakistanis he met there. “There were local people who knew the Koran.”

A second foreign prisoner produced by Afghan officials identified himself as Muhammad Kuzeubaev, a 23-year-old from Temirtau, Kazakhstan. Afghan officials said he was a bombmaker arrested in September in Badakhshan Province in northern Afghanistan.

In an interview, Mr. Kuzeubaev, who also spoke fluent Russian, said he was visiting Afghanistan as a tourist. “I was close to the border,” he said. “I thought I would go explore the country.”

In Badakhshan, he said, two Afghan men abducted him and demanded he join Al Qaeda. He agreed to do so fearing he would be killed, he said. That night, the men showed him parts of a suicide vest and promised to take him to Pakistan for training.

“They showed me the explosives, the vest and grenade,” said Mr. Kuzeubaev. “The next day, they brought some kind of weapons.”

Two days later, Afghan police officers surrounded the house and arrested him, he said. Afghan interrogators beat him, chained him to a wall and prevented him from sleeping for four days, he said.

“They are saying, ‘You are the man who was making the vests,’ ” said Mr. Kuzeubaev. “But the ammunition and other explosives were not mine.”

NYT : Musharraf Refuses to Say When Emergency Will End

Musharraf Refuses to Say When Emergency Will End

By DAVID ROHDE | November 18, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sunday, Nov. 18 — Continuing to defy the United States, Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, declined to tell a senior American envoy on Saturday when he would lift a two-week-old state of emergency, Pakistani and Western officials said.

The journalists began their protest after the government used its influence to shut down an independent television station that was broadcasting from Dubai.

In a two-hour meeting, Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte urged the president to end the emergency. But General Musharraf said he would do so when security improved in the country, the officials said. Mr. Negroponte is the United States’ second highest ranking diplomat.

“The president said, ‘I have noted your concerns and I think I will address all of these,’ ” a close aide to General Musharraf said.

In a news conference before he left Pakistan on Sunday, Mr. Negroponte said it would take time to determine whether the American message had an impact.

“In diplomacy, as you know, we don’t get instant replies,” he said. “I’m sure the president is seriously considering the exchange we had.”

The state of emergency remains a major embarrassment for the Bush administration, which has given more than $10 billion in aid to General Musharraf’s government since 2001 and declared him a valued ally. Ten days ago, President Bush personally telephoned General Musharraf and asked him to end the state of emergency, with no result.

The Bush administration has also pushed for General Musharraf, who is army chief as well as president, to resign from his military post. The general has said he will, but not until the Supreme Court certifies his re-election last month to a five-year term as president, which opposition groups say was illegal.

In addition to meeting with General Musharraf, Mr. Negroponte met twice with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the deputy commander of Pakistan’s army and General Musharraf’s designated successor to head the army. The time and attention paid to General Kayani, a pro-Western moderate, seemed to signal American support for him.

Mr. Negroponte met with General Kayani for an hour on Saturday morning. Then, Mr. Negroponte had a two-hour dinner with General Kayani and Tariq Aziz, a close aide to General Musharraf. General Kayani is widely believed to want to remove the military from politics and to focus on securing the country.

On Nov. 3, General Musharraf declared emergency rule, blacked out independent news stations and began a crackdown that led to the arrest of an estimated 2,500 opposition politicians, lawyers and human rights activists. The move, which General Musharraf has said is an effort to curb terrorism, is widely seen by Pakistanis as an effort by the increasingly unpopular ruler to cling to power.

Mr. Negroponte said he had urged the Pakistani leader to end the emergency, release all political prisoners, resign from his post as army chief and hold free and fair elections in January.

“Emergency rule is not compatible with free and fair elections,” Mr. Negroponte said at the news conference. “The people of Pakistan deserve the opportunity to choose their leaders.”

In a sign of General Musharraf’s growing isolation, the secretary general of the main political party backing him called Saturday for an end to the emergency. The leader, Mushahid Hussain, said that ending the state of emergency would cause “less tension, less political conflict and less polarization.”

“The national interest would be better served,” Mr. Hussain said in an interview with Dawn News, a Pakistani television channel. “The emergency has been having a very negative impact, both at home and abroad.”

A poll in late August and early September by the International Republican Institute, a Washington-based group that conducts democratic training programs overseas, found that 70 percent of Pakistanis supported General Musharraf”s immediate resignation. His popularity is believed to have decreased further since the declaration on Nov. 3.

Western diplomats say they believe that Pakistan’s army still supports General Musharraf, but that there is unease with his leadership. With the army facing a growing insurgency from Islamic militants in the northwest, generals are eager to have an army chief who is focused solely on military matters, they said.

Twice in Pakistan’s history, senior generals have asked military rulers to resign when their conduct was deemed damaging to the army. So far, no signs have emerged that General Kayani or other leaders have asked General Musharraf to step aside.

Mr. Negroponte held a series of meetings that seemed intended to revive an alliance between General Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, an opposition politician and former prime minister.

On Friday, Mr. Negroponte telephoned Ms. Bhutto. He then met Mr. Aziz, the Musharraf aide who served as a back-channel negotiator in an effort to broker a deal between the president and Ms. Bhutto.

American officials hoped that Ms. Bhutto’s presumed popularity in Pakistan would bolster General Musharraf’s low standing. The state of emergency decree seems to have scuttled any deal, for now.

European diplomats and Pakistani analysts have long questioned the viability of an American-engineered Bhutto-Musharraf alliance. Any government they form would be viewed as a United States puppet, they said, and be unpopular.

In the September opinion survey, only 28 percent of Pakistanis polled named Ms. Bhutto as the best person to handle the problems facing Pakistan, out of seven choices. Seventeen percent named General Musharraf. Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister who is in exile in Saudi Arabia and refuses to negotiate with General Musharraf, received the highest marks, with 36 percent support.

The poll of about 4,000 Pakistanis had a margin of error of plus or minus two percentage points.

Also on Saturday, hundreds of Pakistani journalists in three cities protested the president’s continuing crackdown on the media.

In the days before Mr. Negroponte’s arrival, the government allowed several independent news stations to resume broadcasting on cable television, but they operate under a strict new law that carries a sentence of up to three years in jail for journalists who “ridicule” the president.

Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Islamabad.

NYT : Musharraf Refuses to Say When Emergency Will End

Musharraf Refuses to Say When Emergency Will End

By DAVID ROHDE | November 18, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 17 — Continuing to defy the United States, Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, declined to tell a senior American envoy on Saturday when he would lift a two-week-old state of emergency, Pakistani and western officials said.

In a two-hour, face-to-face meeting with Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte — who had been expected to urge the president to end the emergency — General Musharraf said he would do so when security improves in the country. Mr. Negroponte is the United States’ second highest ranking diplomat.

“The president said, ‘I have noted your concerns and I think I will address all of these,’ ” a close aide to General Musharraf said.

A Western diplomat declined to comment on the meeting, but said it would take time to determine whether the American message had an impact on General Musharraf.

“In diplomacy, things don’t happen instantaneously,” said the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “He came with a very strong message and he delivered a very strong message.”

General Musharraf’s defiance continues to be a major embarrassment for the Bush administration, which has provided more than $10 billion in aid to the military leader’s government since 2001 and declared him a valued ally. Ten days ago, President Bush personally telephoned General Musharraf and asked him to end the state of emergency, with no result.

On Nov. 3, the general declared de facto martial law in Pakistan, blacked out independent news stations and arrested an estimated 2,500 opposition politicians, lawyers and human rights activists. The move, which General Musharraf has said is an effort to curb terrorism, is widely seen by Pakistanis as an effort by the increasingly unpopular ruler to cling to power.

American officials had said that Mr. Negroponte would carry a blunt warning to the Pakistani leader to end the emergency, release all prisoners, resign from his post as army chief and hold free and fair elections in January. The first-ever director of national intelligence and a longtime diplomat, Mr. Negroponte is known as a tough negotiator.

In a sign of General Musharraf’s growing isolation, the secretary general of the main political party backing General Musharraf called for an end to the emergency on Saturday. The leader, Mushahid Hussain, said that ending the state of emergency would cause “less tension, less political conflict and less polarization.”

“The national interest would be better served,” Mr. Hussain said in an interview with Dawn News, a Pakistani television channel. “The emergency has been having a very negative impact, both at home and abroad.”

A second western diplomat said General Musharraf would not want to be seen as bowing to American pressure and was unlikely to lift the emergency in the next several days. But the diplomat, who like others would not speak for attribution because they did not want to complicate relations with Pakistani officials, said the president would eventually face criticism from fellow military officers.

“I think sooner or later his military colleagues are going to have to start whispering to him that concession and change is necessary,” the diplomat said.

Before meeting with General Musharraf, Mr. Negroponte met with Gen. Ashfaq Parvez Kayani, the deputy commander of Pakistan’s army. Mr. Kayani, a pro-western moderate, is General Musharraf’s designated successor to head the army and is widely believed to want to remove the military from politics and to focus on securing the country.

Western diplomats believe that Pakistan’s army still supports General Musharraf, but that there is unease with his leadership. With the army facing a growing insurgency from Islamic militants in the northwest, generals are eager to have an army chief who is focused solely on military matters and not distracted by politics, they said.

Twice in Pakistan’s history, senior generals have asked military rulers to resign when their conduct was deemed to be damaging to the army as an institution.

American and Pakistani officials declined to comment on the meeting between Mr. Negroponte and General Kayani. Pakistani officials said that General Kayani also attended a subsequent meeting between Mr. Negroponte and General Musharraf.

On Saturday, speculation also swirled about American intentions. After arriving in Islamabad on Friday, Mr. Negroponte telephoned the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto after she was released from three days of house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore.

Mr. Negroponte also met Tariq Aziz, secretary of the National Security Council and a close aide of General Musharraf.

Mr. Aziz served as a back-channel negotiator in an American effort to broker a deal between General Musharraf and Ms. Bhutto that would create an alliance of pro-western moderates that could counter rising militancy in the country. American officials hoped that Ms. Bhutto’s presumed popularity in Pakistan would bolster General Musharraf’s low standing. The president’s declaration of de facto martial law appears to have scuttled any deal, for now.

European diplomats and Pakistani analysts have long questioned the viability of an American-engineered Bhutto-Musharraf alliance. Any government they form would be viewed as a puppet of the United States, they said.

Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Islamabad.

NYT : Envoy Elicits No New Promises From Musharraf

Envoy Elicits No New Promises From Musharraf

By DAVID ROHDE | November 17, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 17 — Continuing to defy the United States, President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan declined to say when he would lift a two-week-old state of emergency during a meeting with a senior American envoy today, Pakistani and Western officials said.

In a two-hour, face-to-face meeting with Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte, the United States’ second highest ranking diplomat, General Musharraf said he would end the state of emergency when security improves in the country.

"He said that they were looking into the administration and there were quite a few factors," said a close aide to General Musharraf. "The president said ’I have noted your concerns and I think I will address all of these.’" A Western diplomat declined to comment on the meeting, but said it would take time to determine whether the American message had had an impact on General Musharraf.

"In diplomacy, things don’t happen instantaneously," said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "He came with a very strong message and he delivered a very strong message."

General Musharraf’s defiance continues to be a major embarrassment for the Bush administration, which has provided more than $10 billion in aid to the military leader’s government since 2001 and declared him a valued ally. Ten days ago, President Bush personally telephoned General Musharraf and asked him to end the state of emergency, with no result.

On Nov. 3, General Musharraf declared de facto martial law in Pakistan, blacked out independent news stations and arrested an estimated 2,500 opposition politicians, lawyers and human rights activists. The move — which General Musharraf has said is an effort to curb terrorism — is widely seen by Pakistanis as an effort by the increasingly unpopular ruler to cling to power.

American officials said that Mr. Negroponte would carry a stiff warning to the Pakistani leader to end the emergency, release all prisoners, resign from his post as army chief and hold free and fair elections in January. The first-ever director of national intelligence and a longtime diplomat, Mr. Negroponte is known as a blunt negotiator who played a role in the Iran-Contra scandal.

In a sign of General Musharraf’s growing isolation, the chairman of the Pakistani leader’s own political party called for an end to the emergency today. Mushahid Hussain, the chairman of the pro-Musharraf faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, said that ending the state of emergency would cause "less tension, less political conflict and less polarization."

"The national interest would be better served," Mr. Hussain said in an interview with Dawn News, a Pakistani television channel. "The emergency has been having a very negative impact, both at home and abroad."

A poll conducted in early September by the International Republican Institute, a Washington-based non-profit group, before the emergency declaration found that 79 percent of Pakistanis disapproved of General Musharraf’s job performance and that 70 percent supported his immediate resignation. His popularity is believed to have decreased further since the Nov. 3 declaration.

A second western diplomat said General Musharraf would not want to be seen as bowing to American pressure and is unlikely to lift the emergency in the next several days. But they said he will eventually face criticism from fellow military officers.

"Nothing he’s doing is relieving the pressure on him," said the diplomat. "I think sooner or later his military colleagues are going to have to start whispering to him that concession and change is necessary."

Before meeting with General Musharraf, Mr. Negroponte met with General Ashfaq Kayani, the deputy commander of Pakistan’s army. Mr. Kayani, a pro-Western moderate, is General Musharraf’s designated successor and widely believed to want to remove the army from politics and focus on securing the country.

Western diplomats believe that Pakistan’s army still supports General Musharraf, but there is unease with his leadership. With the army facing a growing insurgency from Islamic militants in the northwest, generals are eager to have an army chief who is focused solely on military matters and not distracted by politics, they said.

Twice in Pakistan’s history, senior generals have asked military rulers to resign when their conduct was deemed to be damaging to the army as an institution.

"The consensus is the generals are very uneasy," said the second Western diplomat. "The longer it goes on the more damage is done and that is something that will be uppermost in the minds of the generals."

American and Pakistani officials declined to comment on the meeting between Mr. Negroponte and General Kayani. Pakistani officials said that General Kayani also attended a subsequent meeting between Mr. Negroponte and General Musharraf.

General Musharraf’s crackdown on the Pakistani media continues, according to local journalists. On Friday night, pressure from General Musharraf caused officials in Dubai to block all broadcasts from two independent television networks, ARY and Geo. While blocked from Pakistan’s cable TV system, the two stations’ broadcasts from their studios in Dubai could be seen online and via satellite.

Government officials have ordered stations to cancel talk shows they dislike, according to local journalists. They said owners, who have lost millions of dollars in ad revenues since being shut down, are acquiescing.

"The news coverage that we’re doing is evoking a really harsh reaction from the government," said Talat Hussain, an anchor with Aaj television who resigned today after management canceled his talk show. "And the owners are not really standing up to government pressure."

In the days before Mr. Negroponte’s arrival, the government allowed several independent news stations to resume broadcasting on cable television. But the stations operate under a strict new press law that carries a sentence of up to three years in jail for journalists who "ridicule" the president.

Today, speculation also swirled about which local politicians the United States was backing. After arriving in Islamabad on Friday, Mr. Negroponte telephoned opposition leader Benazir Bhutto after she was released from three days of house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore. The police had blocked Mrs. Bhutto and her supporters from carrying out a protest march from Lahore to Islamabad.

Mr. Negroponte also met Tariq Aziz, secretary of the National Security Council and a close aide of General Musharraf. Mr. Aziz served as a back-channel negotiator in an American effort to broker a deal between General Musharraf and Mrs. Bhutto that would create an alliance of pro-Western moderates that could counter rising militancy the country. American officials hoped that Mrs. Bhutto’s presumed popularity in Pakistan would bolster General Musharraf’s low standing.

European diplomats and Pakistani analysts have long questioned the viability of an American-engineered Bhutto-Musharraf alliance. Any government they form would be viewed as a puppet of the United States, they said, and both leaders appear to be unpopular.

In the September opinion survey, only 28 percent of Pakistanis polled named Mrs. Bhutto as the best person to handle the problems facing Pakistan. Seventeen percent named General Musharraf. Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia and refuses to negotiate with General Musharraf, received the highest marks, with 36 percent support.

Carlotta Gall contributed reporting from Islamabad.

NYT : In Interview, Musharraf Defends Rule by Decree

In Interview, Musharraf Defends Rule by Decree

By CARLOTTA GALL, DAVID ROHDE and JANE PERLEZ | November 14, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 13 — Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, on Tuesday rejected an appeal by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to lift his state of emergency, insisting in an interview that it was the best way to ensure free and fair elections.

He vigorously defended the emergency decree issued 10 days earlier that suspended the Constitution, dismissed the Supreme Court, silenced independent news stations and resulted in the arrests of at least 2,500 opposition party workers, lawyers and human rights advocates.

“I totally disagree with her,” General Musharraf said in an interview with The New York Times at the presidential building here in the capital. “The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner.” He said Sunday that elections would go ahead by Jan. 9.

Dressed in a gray business suit rather than his military uniform, General Musharraf spoke in a confident tone, saying the decree was justified because the Supreme Court had questioned the validity of his re-election, and because of the seriousness of threats from terrorists.

He refused to say when he would step down as army leader and become a civilian president, a demand that President Bush has made publicly and, in a telephone call last week, privately. “It will happen soon,” he said.

General Musharraf, who has been criticized as being increasingly isolated and receiving poor advice from a shrinking circle of aides, insisted he was in touch with the mood of Pakistanis.

Dismissing consistent reports that a vast majority of Pakistanis oppose his emergency decree, he said he had information from “several organizations” and feedback from politicians and friends that the move was popular.

“I know what they feel about the emergency when all these suicide bombings were taking place,” he said, speaking of the rising number of suicide bombings in Pakistan. “Their view is, Why have I done it so late.”

He sharply criticized the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, saying she was confrontational and would be difficult to work with. Ms. Bhutto returned to Pakistan last month in a deal brokered by the Bush administration, which hoped that the two could find a way to share power, in order to increase public support for General Musharraf’s increasingly unpopular military government.

The understanding was that she would take part in elections that could make her prime minister, while he would run for re-election as president. Instead, they have engaged in increasingly public sparring, and Ms. Bhutto has come in for criticism that she is an American pawn who is not mounting serious opposition to the general.

Early Tuesday, 900 police officers surrounded the house where Ms. Bhutto was staying in the eastern city of Lahore, preventing her from leading a march to Islamabad to protest what opposition groups say is martial law. After waiting for more than a week, on Tuesday she joined other opposition leaders and called for General Musharraf to resign.

“You come here on supposedly on a reconciliatory mode, and right before you land, you’re on a confrontationist mode,” he said in the interview, conducted in English. “I am afraid this is producing negative vibes, negative optics.”

As for her demand that he resign, he said “she has no right” to ask.

On Nov. 3, General Musharraf imposed emergency rule when it became clear that the Supreme Court was about to declare his re-election last month illegal. That election was carried out by the national and provincial assemblies and boycotted by many opposition parties, though not by Ms. Bhutto’s.

After a more compliant court was impaneled this week, General Musharraf said he expected to be sworn in as a civilian president after the new court validated his re-election. But asked when emergency rule would end, he said matter-of-factly, “I don’t know, I don’t know.”

He said Pakistan was suffering from a “disturbed terrorist environment,” and he appeared to be unaffected by calls from Europe as well as the United States for an end to the emergency rule.

Instead, the general, whose government has received more than $10 billion in aid from the Bush administration, mostly for the military, asked for even more support, and more patience.

The Bush administration has called the general the best bet to fight Al Qaeda and Islamic militants, but has also complained that the cooperation of the Pakistani military has been sporadic and often ineffective.

Analysts here and abroad have said that the state of emergency has diverted thousands of police and intelligence agents from the fight against terrorism to the enforcement of the crackdown. But General Musharraf said the decree had done no such thing.

“If we are dealing with moderates, that doesn’t mean that we are not dealing with terrorists,” he said. “Who has said that? They are two different issues.”

He said his army was limited in its resources for taking on the militants. “Ten days back, of 20 Cobra helicopters, we have only one that was serviceable,” he said. “We need more support.”

His army even needed help from the United States on efforts to shut down the FM radio signal of a leading pro-Taliban religious leader, Maulana Fazlullah, whose militant followers have been rapidly gaining territory in the area of Swat in the North-West Frontier Province.

“You give us the technical means to do it,” he said. “We’ve tried everything.”

“We’ve adopted all technical means,” he added, but so far his forces have failed to squelch the imam’s transmissions, which are believed to be fairly amateurish.

Militant activity in the rugged northwest has increased markedly this year, raising questions among Pakistanis about how American money for the army was being used. General Musharraf said the army had now regrouped in northern and southern Waziristan, where it faced the strongest challenge from the militants, whom he called a “vicious enemy.”

“Now wherever the disturbance, we will strike very, very strongly,” he said.

In Washington, Bush administration officials said privately that they were increasingly frustrated with both General Musharraf and Ms. Bhutto. Administration officials said they were quietly trying to take the temperature of Pakistan’s army for signs that General Musharraf’s top officers were starting to turn cool toward him.

“It’s not a question of trying to prompt anything,” one senior official said. “We’re just trying to make sure we’re keeping tabs of all the concerned parties.”

Ms. Rice, meanwhile, is dispatching John D. Negroponte, her deputy, to Pakistan for a face-to-face meeting with General Musharraf, they said. The envoy, who last week called the general “indispensable” to American interests, is expected to arrive in Islamabad at the end of the week.

But other administration officials fretted that Mr. Negroponte’s efforts may yield as little as the phone calls from his boss, Ms. Rice, and her boss, President Bush.

Officials at both the White House and the State Department also said they were worried that Ms. Bhutto had overplayed her hand in calling for General Musharraf to resign, and that she may no longer be able to accept an olive branch from him on a power-sharing deal, should he decide to extend one.

General Musharraf said Ms. Bhutto had been placed under house arrest because she had accused the chief minister of the province of Punjab, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, of plotting against her.

The detention, he said, was to prevent an incident that she could then use to lay blame on the government. He added that her plan for her party members to participate in the march across the Punjab to Islamabad was “a preposterous thing to do.”

General Musharraf questioned Ms. Bhutto’s popularity, and at one point scanned an article she recently wrote for the Op-Ed page of The New York Times that he had brought to the interview.

In reaction to her claim that her party would most likely sweep parliamentary elections, the general said, “Let’s start the elections, and let’s see whether she wins.”

“Constitutionally today she has been prime minister twice,” he said. “What about the third time? She is not legally allowed; she is not constitutionally allowed. Why are we taking things for granted?”

Western governments and Western news media, he said, have overestimated Ms. Bhutto’s support because they listen too much to human rights advocates in Pakistan.

“You go and meet human rights activists,” he said, challenging his interviewers. “Ninety percent of them may have never cast their votes. They sleep on the day of elections.”

General Musharraf said 58 privately owned television channels in Pakistan that had been closed under the emergency decree — including a dozen independent news stations — would be allowed to open if they agreed to a government code of conduct.

“The media is independent,” General Musharraf said. “We have taken certain actions against the media because we want to bring some responsibility to them.”

Journalists and Western diplomats have condemned the code as a blatant attempt at political censorship. The code carries a jail sentence of up to three years for journalists whose coverage “ridicules” the president or other government officials, they said.

Regarding his opponents other than Ms. Bhutto, General Musharraf yielded no ground.

Asked why Asma Jahangir, who heads the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, had been arrested when she attended a meeting at the commission’s headquarters on the first day of emergency rule, he replied, “Because she was agitating and trying to disturb the peace.”

General Musharraf said Ms. Jahangir, the leading human rights advocate in Pakistan and one of the first women to become a lawyer, was too ambitious in her fight for women’s rights. He agreed that Pakistani women deserved more opportunities, and he cited his own legislation amending the laws to protect women against accusations of rape and adultery.

But Ms. Jahangir, he said, wanted to go too fast, and would therefore fail. He called her “quite an unbalanced character.”

Helene Cooper contributed reporting from Washington.

NYT : Barricaded in Home, Bhutto Says President Should Resign

Barricaded in Home, Bhutto Says President Should Resign

By DAVID ROHDE and JANE PERLEZ | November 14, 2007

LAHORE, Pakistan, Nov. 13 — Hundreds of riot policemen blocked the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and her supporters from setting out today on a planned march from Lahore across 160 miles of Punjab Province to the capital, Islamabad.

Ms. Bhutto, barricaded in her home here, called for the resignation of Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, in a telephone interview with CNN this morning. She told a group of reporters by telephone that her political party, which usually commands about one-third of the popular vote, will probably boycott the parliamentary elections planned for January, The Associated Press reported.

Ms. Bhutto told CNN that she and her party, the Pakistan People’s Party, were not in discussions with General Musharraf, either directly or indirectly, over a possible power-sharing agreement, which the United States had urged the two sides to reach.

Instead, Ms. Bhutto told the group of reporters, her party will pursue an alliance with other opposition groups, including its main rival, the Pakistan Muslim League of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, to restore democracy.About 900 police officers surrounded the house where Ms. Bhutto is staying here. Workers from her political party who tried to cross police lines to reach her were arrested. Riot policemen sealed off the neighborhood using barbed wire and dump trucks loaded with sand.

Early in the day, a party spokesman, Farzana Raja, told reporters, “We will definitely try to come out,” and added about Ms. Bhutto, “She will definitely try to come out.” Minutes later, the police arrested Ms. Raja and several dozen other party workers.

Ms. Bhutto said in the telephone interview, “My plans have been taken out of my hands by force.”

Some 3,500 police officers were deployed around Lahore, and they arrested hundreds of Pakistan People’s Party workers. Riot police were stationed outside government buildings here as well, in anticipation of protests by Ms. Bhutto’s supporters.

The government has moved repeatedly to head off mass demonstrations planned by Ms. Bhutto and her party. The city of Rawalpindi was flooded with police on Friday to prevent a rally there, and on Monday, the government placed Ms. Bhutto under house arrest for seven days.

Other opposition groups have accused her of mounting only token protests while negotiating with General Musharraf. But a party vice-president, Yousuf Arza Giani, stood in front of police barriers today and told reporters that the party had broken off all talks with the government. “It’s really bad, extremely bad,” he said.

A government spokesman, Tariq Azim Khan, citing intelligence reports, suggested that Ms. Bhutto could be a target for militants. She survived a suicide-bombing attack on her motorcade last month in Karachi when she returned to Pakistan, after eight years in self-imposed exile, to lead her party in parliamentary elections.

While it is generally agreed that a threat to her safety exists, though, General Musharraf is widely seen here as using it, and the larger specter of terrorism, as a pretext to expand his own powers and squelch all opposition. Officials of Ms. Bhutto’s party scoffed at the notion of an imminent threat. “It’s a drama — there is no reality to it,” a local spokeswoman said today.

The attack on Oct. 18 in Karachi killed about 140 party workers. The government has used that attack as public justification for stopping demonstrations, which it says are illegal under General Musharraf’s emergency-rule decree.

The Muslim League and another important opposition party, the Jamaat-e-Islaami, said on Monday that they would probably boycott the elections if emergency rule was still in place. General Musharraf said on Sunday that emergency rule would continue at least until the elections are held.

Ms. Bhutto was prime minister of Pakistan twice and was twice dismissed before she was able to complete her terms. In the CNN interview, she reiterated her desire to stay in the country. “I prefer to live in Pakistan in jail,” she said, “than to leave.”

Separately, foreign ministers from the Commonwealth of Britain and its former colonies said Pakistan would be suspended from the organization unless the decree was repealed and General Musharraf stepped down as army chief by Nov. 22, The Associated Press reported.

Jane Perlez reported from Islamabad, and David Rohde from Lahore, Pakistan.

IHT : Bhutto calls for Musharraf to resign

Bhutto calls for Musharraf to resign

By David Rohde and Jane Perlez | November 13, 2007

LAHORE, Pakistan: Hundreds of riot police early Tuesday blocked the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and her supporters from making a planned long march from this eastern city 160 miles through Punjab Province to the capital, Islamabad. Bhutto, barricaded in her home here, called for the resignation of Pakistan's president, General Pervez Musharraf, in a phone interview with CNN this morning.

About 900 police officers surrounded the house where Bhutto was staying here and arrested party workers who tried to cross police lines to reach her. Riot police using barbed wire and dump trucks loaded with sand blocked off the neighborhood.

"We will definitely try to come out," said Farzana Raja, a party spokesman, referring to street protests. "She will definitely try to come out." Minutes later, the police arrested Raja and several dozen other party workers, and in the interview with CNN, Bhutto said, "My plans have been taken out of my hands by force."

About 3,500 police officers were deployed around the city, and they arrested hundreds of workers from her political party Tuesday. Riot police officers were outside government buildings here as well, in anticipation of protests by Bhutto's supporters.

The Pakistani government placed her under house arrest on Monday for seven days, members of her party said, in an attempt to block the march. On Friday, a huge police presence in the city of Rawalpindi prevented a rally planned by her there.

Other opposition groups have accused her of mounting only token protests while negotiating a power-sharing agreement with Musharraf, at the urging of the United States.

Standing in front of police barriers, Yousuf Arza Giani, a party vice president, said that the party had broken off all talks with the government. "It's really bad, extremely bad," he said. In her interview with CNN, Bhutto said that she and her supporters were not talking with Musharraf either directly or indirectly.

A government spokesman, Tariq Azim Khan, citing intelligence data, suggested that Bhutto could be a target for militants. She survived a suicide-bombing attack last month in Karachi when she returned to Pakistan, after eight years in self-imposed exile, to lead her party in parliamentary elections.

Although there is general agreement that a threat to her exists, Musharraf is widely seen here as using the specter of terrorism to expand his own powers and squelch all opposition. Party officials scoffed at the notion of a threat. "It's a drama — there is no reality to it," a local spokeswoman said Tuesday.

About 140 of Bhutto's party workers were killed in the attack in Karachi on Oct. 18. The government has used that attack as public justification for stopping her protests. It has also made clear that any demonstrations are illegal under the emergency decree.

The decree has also cast uncertainty on parliamentary elections, scheduled for January.

Two of Pakistan's bigger opposition parties said Monday that they would probably boycott the elections if emergency rule was still in place. Bhutto has not said whether she would pull her party, the Pakistan People's Party, out of the elections. Musharraf said Sunday that emergency rule would continue at least until the elections.

On Sunday, Bhutto called the announcement a "positive" but insufficient step. She assumed a slightly tougher tone on Monday, suggesting that her negotiations with Musharraf had come to an end.

"We cannot work with anyone who has suspended the Constitution, imposed emergency rule and oppressed the judiciary," she said in Lahore.

Raza Zafarul Haz, the chairman of one of the country's biggest parties, the Pakistan Muslim League of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said that for free and fair elections to go ahead, emergency rule would have to be lifted and judges who were fired after the imposition of the rule would need to be reinstated.

The party will make its final decision within a week on whether to participate, he said.

Liaqat Baloch, the secretary general of Pakistan's most popular Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, said the party was considering withholding its candidates if the emergency was still in place in January.

Despite Bhutto's tougher comments on Monday, analysts said they believed that she had not completely moved away from her original plan, devised with the backing of the Bush administration, to seek a power-sharing deal with Musharraf.

As the leader of the Pakistan People's Party, which has usually commanded about a third of the popular vote, Bhutto is trying to steer a path between a desire to return to power and not to appear to be too close to the widely unpopular president.

Bhutto was prime minister of Pakistan twice and was twice dismissed before she was able to complete her terms. In the CNN interview, she reiterated her desire to stay in Pakistan. "I prefer to live in Pakistan in jail," she said, "than to leave."

Separately, foreign ministers from the Commonwealth of Britain and its former colonies said Pakistan would be suspended from the organization unless the decree was repealed and Musharraf stepped down as army chief by Nov. 22, The Associated Press reported.

NYT : Pakistan Detains Bhutto in Bid to Stop Protest March

Pakistan Detains Bhutto in Bid to Stop Protest March

By DAVID ROHDE and JANE PERLEZ | November 13, 2007

LAHORE, Pakistan, Tuesday, Nov. 13 — The Pakistani government placed the opposition leader Benazir Bhutto under house arrest on Monday for seven days. The move was an attempt to block a planned “long march” of her supporters from this eastern city to the capital, Islamabad.

Police officers arrested hundreds of workers from her political party around this city on Tuesday. Riot police officers were deployed outside government buildings here as well, in anticipation of protests by Ms. Bhutto’s supporters.

It was unclear what Ms. Bhutto would do in response to the government’s move. Dozens of police officers and trucks surrounded the house where she was staying here. On Friday, a huge police presence in the city of Rawalpindi prevented a rally planned by her there.

A government spokesman, Tariq Azim Khan, citing intelligence data, suggested that Ms. Bhutto could be a target for militants. She survived a suicide-bombing attack last month in Karachi when she returned to Pakistan, after eight years in self-imposed exile, to lead her party in parliamentary elections.

Although there is widespread agreement that a threat to her exists, Pakistan’s president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, is widely seen here as using the specter of terrorism to expand his own powers and squelch all opposition. Party officials scoffed at the notion of a threat. “It’s a drama — there is no reality to it,” a local spokeswoman said Tuesday.

Several dozens members of Ms. Bhutto’s party showed up to protest at the police barricades surrounding the house where she was staying Tuesday. It was unclear whether more would show.

The government, now nine days into an emergency decree that has effectively put Pakistan under martial law, would stop the protest in the same way it shut down a rally that had been planned by Ms. Bhutto on Friday, Mr. Khan said.

On that day, in a huge show of force, lines of policemen, barbed wire and concrete barricades confined Ms. Bhutto to her home in Islamabad. At the same time, thousands of police officers locked down the site where the rally was to have taken place, in a park in Rawalpindi, the garrison city close to Islamabad.

Mr. Khan said he did not know the details of how the police would prevent protesters from converging on the route of the planned march this week, 160 miles through Punjab Province from Lahore to Islamabad.

About 140 of Ms. Bhutto’s party workers were killed in the attack in Karachi on Oct. 18. The government has used that attack as public justification for stopping her protests. It has also made clear that any demonstrations are illegal under the emergency decree.

The decree has also cast uncertainty on parliamentary elections, scheduled for January.

Two of Pakistan’s bigger opposition parties said Monday that they would probably boycott the elections if emergency rule was still in place. Ms. Bhutto has not said whether she would pull her party, the Pakistan Peoples Party, out of the elections. General Musharraf, said Sunday that emergency rule would continue at least until the elections.

On Sunday, Ms. Bhutto called the announcement a “positive” but insufficient step. She assumed a slightly tougher tone on Monday, suggesting that her negotiations with General Musharraf had come to an end.

“We cannot work with anyone who has suspended the Constitution, imposed emergency rule and oppressed the judiciary,” she said in Lahore.

Raza Zafarul Haz, the chairman of one of the country’s biggest parties, the Pakistan Muslim League of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said that for free and fair elections to go ahead, emergency rule would have to be lifted and judges who were fired after the imposition of the rule would need to be reinstated.

“Under the current circumstances it is very difficult to expect there will be fair elections in the country,” Mr. Haz said. His party will make its final decision within a week on whether to participate, he said.

Liaqat Baloch, the secretary general of Pakistan’s most popular Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islami, said the party was considering withholding its candidates if the emergency was still in place in January.

Despite Ms. Bhutto’s tougher comments on Monday, analysts said they believed she had not completely moved away from her original plan, devised with the backing of the Bush administration, to seek a power-sharing deal with General Musharraf.

As the leader of the Pakistan Peoples Party, which has usually commanded about a third of the popular vote, Ms. Bhutto is trying to steer a path between a desire to return to power and not to appear to be too close to the widely unpopular president.

Ms. Bhutto was prime minister of Pakistan twice and was twice dismissed before she was able to complete her terms.

Separately, foreign ministers from the Commonwealth of Britain and its former colonies said Pakistan would be suspended from the organization unless the decree was repealed and General Musharraf stepped down as army chief by Nov. 22, The Associated Press reported.

Jane Perlez reported from Islamabad, and David Rohde from Lahore, Pakistan.

IHT : Opposition may boycott vote in Pakistan

Opposition may boycott vote in Pakistan

By Jane Perlez and David Rohde | November 12, 2007

ISLAMABAD: Two major opposition political parties said Monday that they would probably boycott parliamentary elections in January if the Pakistani president, General Pervez Musharraf, persisted in holding the vote under emergency rule.

Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the largest opposition party, the Pakistan People's Party, has not definitively stated that she would pull out of the election.

But in a slightly tougher tone than she used Sunday, when she called the announcement of a date for elections a positive though insufficient step, Bhutto said Monday: "We cannot work with anyone who has suspended the Constitution, imposed emergency rule and oppressed the judiciary."

Therefore, she said, she would proceed Tuesday with a protest march from the eastern city of Lahore to Islamabad.

Raza Zafarul Haz, chairman of the Pakistani Muslim League, the party headed by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, said that at a minimum, emergency rule would have to be lifted and fired judges would have to be reinstated for there to be free and fair elections.

"Under the current circumstances, it is very difficult to expect there will be fair elections in the country," Haz said. The party will make a decision in the coming week, he said.

Liaqat Baloch, secretary general of Pakistan's most popular Islamic party, Jamaat-e-Islaami, said it was considering not fielding candidates if the emergency remained in place in January.

Bhutto also said Monday, "We are saying no to any more talks." But analysts said they believed she had not abandoned her original plan, devised with the backing of the U.S. administration, of seeking some kind of conciliation with Musharraf.

That prospect looked increasingly difficult after Musharraf announced Sunday that emergency rule, which he imposed more than a week ago, would prevail beyond the election.

As the leader of the Pakistan People's Party, which has traditionally garnered about one-third of the popular vote on a populist platform, Bhutto is walking a fine line, hoping to return to power while not seeming to be too close to the fiercely unpopular Musharraf.

Bhutto was prime minister of Pakistan twice, and twice she was dismissed before completing her term. She has made no secret of the fact that she would like be prime minister again.

She remained closeted at a house in Lahore on Monday, meeting with party aides and planning strategy for the protest march across Pakistani Punjab.

In order to keep her people united under her banner, she has vowed to go ahead with the protest, which she is calling the Long March, even if the authorities try to shut it down. One aide said the party was not afraid of "a battlefield" between party workers and the police.

The chances of such a protest's being held along such an exposed route seem slim. On Friday, the government suppressed a planned rally by Bhutto in Rawalpindi, the city adjacent to the capital, before it started, and there were signs it would do the same with the Long March.

The authorities have two arguments against permitting Bhutto's demonstrations: that no protests are allowed under emergency rule, which is effectively martial law, and that Bhutto is a high-profile target for suicide bombers and other militants.

Some 140 people were killed last month in a bombing attack on her procession after she returned to Pakistan after eight years in self-exile.

One of Pakistan's major daily newspapers, The News, reported Monday that one of Musharraf's chief political operatives, Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi, who is also chief minister of Punjab, was optimistic that the general's party, the Pakistan Muslim League, was well placed to win in early January.

Musharraf has become increasingly unpopular in the past year as he has extended his dual role as head of the army and president far longer than expected.

But according to the newspaper, Elahi believed "a few hundred lawyers and a couple of dozens politicians behind bars" would not hurt their chances.

Western diplomats believe about 2,500 people, including lawyers and human rights advocates, have been jailed since emergency rule was imposed on Nov. 3.

The United States has given more than $10 billion in assistance to Pakistan since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, after which Musharraf pledged to become an ally in the campaign against terrorism. The majority of that aid has gone to the Pakistani military, including more than $5 billion to fight terrorism in Pakistan, an effort that Washington complains is not going well.

A tiny portion of the $10 billion packet - $26 million - has been provided to support democratic elections. But with no courts, a suppressed independent media and a lack of independent supervision of the election commission, such elections appear to be impossible.

Three days into the emergency rule last week, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Anne Patterson, announced that $26 million was going toward voter education, computerization of voting rolls and the training of poll watchers. She said the last 80,000 of 430,000 transparent ballot boxes purchased for Pakistan by the United States and Japan would be delivered by Dec. 9.

Western officials said Monday that they did not know what would happen to the $26 million program if the elections proceeded under emergency rule.

David Rohde reported from Lahore.

NYT : Musharraf Consolidates His Control With Arrests

Musharraf Consolidates His Control With Arrests

By JANE PERLEZ | November 4, 2007

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 4, — About 500 opposition party workers, lawyers and human rights activists were arrested today as the government of General Pervez Musharraf tried to consolidate its control after imposing emergency rule.

Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader, returned from Dubai after emergency law was declared. She was greeted by supporters at the Karachi airport.

About a dozen privately run television news stations remained off the air, and international channels, including the BBC and CNN, were suspended. In the city of Lahore, police officers armed with tear gas tried to break up a meeting of regime opponents at the headquarters of the Pakistan Human Rights Commission. They took dozens of people away in police vans.

Around the country, at least 80 lawyers were arrested, in an apparent bid to head off demonstrations that lawyers groups had planned for Monday.

Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz said at a news conference today that new parliamentary elections, which had been expected in January, could be “up to a year” away. He said up to 500 opposition activists had been arrested nationwide.

Musharraf announced the emergency decree, under which the Constitution was suspended and most of the Supreme Court was dismissed, on state-run television just after midnight. In a 45-minute speech, the president said he had declared the emergency to limit terrorist attacks and “preserve the democratic transition that I initiated eight years back.” He did not say how long the state of emergency would be maintained.

The general, dressed in civilian clothes, quoted Abraham Lincoln, citing his suspension of some rights during the American Civil War as justification for the state of emergency in Pakistan.

Musharraf accused the Supreme Court of releasing 61 men who he said were under investigation for terrorist activities. “Judicial activism,” he said, had demoralized the security forces, hurt the fight against terrorism and slowed the spread of democracy. “Obstacles are being created in the way of democratic process,” he said, “I think for vested, personal interests, against the interest of the country.”

The main opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, returned to Pakistan on Saturday night from Dubai and accused Musharraf of using the specter of terrorism to prolong his hold on power. “This is not emergency,” she said. “This is martial law.”

Bhutto spent today at her residence in Karachi. Leaders of her party, the Pakistan People’s Party, said she would fly to Islamabad to hold talks with other opposition parties about how to proceed. But Bhutto did not show up here.

In interviews with foreign television channels, Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan after years in exile in October with the backing of the United States, appealed for free and fair elections. But sympathizers to her cause said her options for influencing the situation appeared limited.

Organizing large protests under emergency rule, and after the bomb attack on her arrival procession Oct. 18 that killed 140 people, would be difficult, said Najem Sethi, the editor in chief of The Daily Times.

“Verbally she will be very critical,” Sethi said. “But she is not going to participate in protests. She’s going to make a token representation. Behind the scenes she will work with the government for elections as soon as possible.”

Musharraf summoned foreign diplomats, including the U.S. ambassador, Anne Patterson, to a meeting Sunday to explain the reasons for his action, according to diplomats.

The emergency rule came into force less than 24 hours after Musharraf met here with the senior United States. military commander in the region, Admiral William Fallon, who warned the Pakistani leader that U.S. military assistance would be in jeopardy if he introduced martial law, diplomats said.

Soon after Musharraf’s emergency decree, Washington officials said it was unlikely that the military aid would be cut. Indeed, the general tailored his decree to stress the necessity of continuing the fight against Islamic extremists sympathetic to the Taliban and Al Qaeda, which may have made it difficult for the United States to back off its commitments.

Musharraf acted just days before the Supreme Court was due to decide on the legality of his re-election on Oct. 6.

Among the dozens of lawyers arrested was the president of the Supreme Court bar association, Aitzaz Ahsan, who has opposed Musharraf in legal arguments and in political protests, said Ayesha Tammy Haq, an Islamabad lawyer.

“If you want to take the country away from Talibanization, these are the people who can do it, the secular middle class,” said Haq, as she waited Sunday at the Adiala jail in Rawalpindi to see Ahsan.

A government spokesman, Tariq Aziz Khan, said the arrests of lawyers were “preventive measures” taken because of a “threat to future law and order.”

In the spring, lawyers spearheaded opposition to Musharraf after he fired the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. The Supreme Court later reinstated Chaudhry, who continued to irritate Musharraf. By the end of last week, the general seemed unsure that the Supreme Court would rule favorably on his re-election.

Under the emergency declaration, the Supreme Court justices were ordered to take an oath to abide by a “provisional constitutional order” that replaces the country’s existing Constitution. Seven justices rejected the order Saturday night, according to an aide to Chaudhry.

Hours later, the state-run news media reported that three justices generally seen as supporting Musharraf had taken an oath to uphold the emergency measure. And it was announced that Chaudhry had been replaced by a pro-government member of the Supreme Court bench, Abdul Hamid Doger, as chief justice.

The director of the private television channel Aaj TV, Wamiq Zuberi, said a magistrate accompanied by five vans of gun-toting police officers showed up at the channel’s studios here Saturday night. They wanted to confiscate the channel’s outdoor broadcasting van, Zuberi said. But the magistrate did not have a warrant, and the workers at the studio stood their ground, forcing the officials to leave, Zuberi said.

Aziz, the prime minister, said today that the government planned to work on “a code of conduct” for broadcasters.

Representatives of several of the major opposition parties said their workers had been arrested. Ahsan Iqbal, the secretary for information of the Muslim League party, headed by the exiled politician Nawaz Sharif, said that eight party members had been arrested in the remote district of Narowal on the border with India.

David Rohde and Salman Masood contributed reporting.

IHT : Pakistan declares state of emergency

Pakistan declares state of emergency

By David Rohde | November 3, 2007

ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf declared a state of emergency Saturday night, suspending the Constitution, blacking out all independent television news reports and filling the streets of the capital with police officers and soldiers.

The move appeared to be an effort by Musharraf, a general who is also Pakistan's military leader, to reassert his fading power in the face of growing opposition from the Supreme Court, civilian political parties and hard-line Islamists. The Supreme Court has been considering the legality of Musharraf's re-election in October as president, which opposition groups have said was improper.

Soon after independent television stations went off the air in the capital, just after 5 p.m., the police surrounded the home of the chief justice and the Supreme Court building, with justices still inside. The justices were ordered to sign a "provisional constitutional order" enabling the emergency decree, according to Western diplomats, with the government leaving implicit that any justices failing to do so would be dismissed.

At least 6 of the court's 11 justices gathered in the court and rejected the order, according to an aide to Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry. By 9 p.m., Chaudhry and the other justices had gone home, surrounded by police officers and with the phone lines cut, witnesses and officials said.

Aitzaz Ahsan, a prominent lawyer who led protests against Musharraf this spring, was detained after saying that opposition groups would announce a schedule of nationwide strikes and protests on Monday. Before being detained, he accused Musharraf of "criminal flouting of the Constitution," adding that "the people and the lawyers cannot be suspended."

The emergency declaration came despite repeated calls from senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, not to do so. On Friday, the senior U.S. military commander in the Middle East, Admiral William Fallon, told Musharraf and his top generals in a meeting here that declaring emergency rule would jeopardize the extensive U.S. financial support for the Pakistani military.

Rice personally intervened twice in the past four months to try to keep Musharraf from imposing emergency rule, telephoning him at 2 a.m. Pakistan time in August. On Saturday, while traveling to Turkey for an Iraq security conference, she reinforced that message, saying, "I think it would be quite obvious that the United States wouldn't be supportive of extra-constitutional means."

Musharraf's order stated that attacks by militants have risen to "an unprecedented level of violent intensity" and now "pose a grave threat" to the people of Pakistan. The order accuses "some members of the judiciary" of "working at cross purposes" with the government by releasing some detained militants. It goes on to accuse the Supreme Court of "overstepping the limits of judicial authority" in a variety of areas, including economic policy.

But Pakistani analysts like Hasan Askari Rizvi, an expert on military affairs, said the order was an effort by Musharraf to maintain his own power, which he gained in October 1999 when he staged a bloodless coup.

"This is the first time Musharraf has brought in military rule to sustain himself in power," he said. "He felt threatened by the Supreme Court."

Chaudhry has been the focal point of the opposition to Musharraf. Supported by lawyers, judges and a wide public following, Chaudhry led a street-style political campaign against his summary dismissal earlier this year that helped fuel the growing popular sentiment against Musharraf.

The Supreme Court reinstated Chaudhry this summer, and in September the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Musharraf, saying he could run for re-election while still in uniform.

But the focus was again on Chaudhry last week as the deadline drew closer for a decision on the legality of Musharraf's re-election on Oct. 6 by the national Parliament and four provincial assemblies. Rumors were rife in Islamabad all week that the court might decide against the president or give a muddied verdict that would leave his position as president unclear.

Several lawyers and journalists after the declaration of emergency rule that they believed that the opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto, left Pakistan on Thursday for Dubai in the United Arab Emirates after realizing that Musharraf was planning some form of martial law. But aides to Bhutto said that immediately after hearing of the emergency declaration Saturday, she made plans to fly back to Pakistan on Wednesday evening. Members of her political party condemned the emergency order.

Bhutto, who returned to Pakistan in mid-October under an arrangement brokered by the United States and Britain, warned the government on Wednesday that she was opposed to emergency rule. "If emergency is imposed, people will come out and resist it," she said.

She returned to Pakistan on Oct. 18 for the first time in eight years on the understanding that she would take part in elections expected early next year. The Bush administration hoped that Bhutto would bring a democratic face to Pakistan even as it continued under the rule of Musharraf, who has pledged to give up his military post after being sworn in for another presidential term on Nov. 15.