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ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 13 — The president of Pakistan, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, rejected an appeal by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to lift the state of emergency, insisting in an interview on Tuesday that it was the best way to fight rising militancy and to ensure free and fair elections.
He defended the emergency decree issued 10 days ago that scrapped the Constitution, dismissed the Supreme Court and resulted in the arrests of 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 on Tuesday. “The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner.” He said last week that elections would go ahead by Jan. 9.
General Musharraf said the decree was justified because the Supreme Court had meddled in politics, specifically the validity of his re-election, and because of the serious threat from terrorists.
He sharply criticized Benazir Bhutto, the opposition leader, saying that she was confrontational and would be difficult to work with.
Ms. Bhutto, who is being held under house arrest in Lahore, has been prevented from leading a “long march” to the capital, Islamabad, to protest the emergency decree and on Tuesday 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. “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.
General Musharraf and Ms.Bhutto are longtime rivals who are known to detest each other. But Ms. Bhutto returned to Pakistan last month in a deal brokered by the Bush administration to prop up General Musharraf. The understanding was that she would participate in elections that could make her prime minister, while he would run for re-election as president.
But General Musharraf imposed emergency rule when it became clear that the Supreme Court was on the verge of declaring him ineligible to run for president. After a new and more compliant court was impaneled this week, the general said he expected to be sworn in as a civilian president after the court validated his re-election.
In the interview, the general, dressed in a gray suit and blue tie, described Pakistan as suffering from a “disturbed terrorist environment.”
When asked when emergency rule would end, he said, matter of factly, “I don’t know, I don’t know.” He added, “We need to see the environment.”
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 of giving up the military post.
The general, who has received more than $10 billion in aid from the Bush administration, most of it for the military, asked for even more support, and more patience.
The administration has called the general the best bet to fight Al Qaeda and Islamic militants, but has also complained that the Pakistani military has been sporadic and often ineffective. And many analysts, here and abroad, have noted that the state of emergency has diverted thousands of police and intelligence agents from the fight against terrorism to enforcing the crackdown.
In the interview, General Musharraf said the Pakistan Army had limited resources in taking on the fight. “Ten days back, of 20 Cobra helicopters, we have only one that was serviceable,” he said. “We need more support.”
Militant activity in the country’s rugged northwest has increased markedly this year, and there have been numerous suicide bombings in the major cities. General Musharraf said the army had regrouped in northern and southern Waziristan, where it faced the strongest challenge from the militants, who he called a “vicious enemy.”
“Now wherever the disturbance, we will strike very very strongly,” he said. The United States Embassy confirmed on Tuesday that it was sending Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte to press General Musharraf to end emergency rule. The envoy is expected to arrive in Islamabad at the end of the week.
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At another point, General Musharraf said that 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.
Ms. Bhutto was grounded, he said, to prevent an incident that she could then blame on the government.
He added that Ms. Bhutto’s plan for her party members to participate in the so-called long 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 Op-Ed article she recently wrote for The Times that he had brought to the interview.
In reaction to her claim that she would sweep elections, the general said, “Let’s start the elections and let’s see whether she wins.”
“Constitutionally today she has been prime minister twice, what about the third time?” he said. “She is not legally allowed, she is not constitutionally allowed. Why are we taking things for granted?”
Earlier in his rule, General Musharraf passed a law forbidding a prime minister from serving more than two terms, a rule that seemed aimed at Ms. Bhutto and another Musharraf rival, Nawaz Sharif. The rule was rescinded as part of the deal that led to Ms. Bhutto’s return. General Musharraf, who has been criticized for being isolated in the cocoon of the presidency, insisted he was in touch with the mood of Pakistanis, and said he believed emergency rule was popular.
Based on information from “several organizations” and feedback from politicians and friends, he said, “I know what they feel about the media, I know what they feel about the emergency when all these suicide bombings were taking place.”
“Their view is why have I done it so late,” he said, referring to the Pakistani people.
Western governments and Western media, he said, overestimated Ms. Bhutto’s support because they listen too much to human rights advocates in Pakistan.
“You go and meet human rights activists,” he challenged his interviewers. “Ninety percent of them may have never cast their votes. They sleep on the day of elections.”
General Musharraf said nearly a dozen independent news television stations that had been closed under the emergency decree would be allowed to open if they agreed to a government code of conduct.
Asked why a human rights advocate, Asma Jehangir, 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.”
He called Ms. Jehangir, the leading human rights advocate in Pakistan and one of the first women to become a lawyer, “quite an unbalanced character.”
General Musharraf said Ms. Jehangir was too ambitious in her fight for women’s rights. He agreed that Pakistani women deserved more opportunities, and he cited his own legislation that amended the laws to protect women against accusations of rape and adultery.
But Ms. Jehangir, he said, wanted to go too fast, and would therefore fail. |
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