Bhutto: I Will Not Serve As Pm As Long As Musharraf is President

Pakistan's opposition leader Benazir Bhutto today moved closer to an open rupture with the president, General Pervez Musharraf, as she ruled out serving under him in a future government.

As she was placed under house arrest for the second time in five days, Bhutto hardened her criticism of the man with whom she has been negotiating a power-sharing deal, calling on him to resign.

"I will not serve as prime minister as long as Musharraf is president," Bhutto told Reuters. "Even if I wanted to work with him, I would not have the public support.

"Negotiations between us have broken down over the massive use of police force against women and children. There's no question now of getting this back on track because anyone who is associated with General Musharraf gets contaminated."

Stepping up the ante, Bhutto said it was now likely her Pakistan People's Party would boycott January's parliamentary elections and that she would work with the exiled former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, to restore democracy.

Bhutto has previously called on Musharraf to step down as head of the army and become a civilian leader, but this is the first time she has called for him to resign as president.

As relations between Bhutto and Musharraf deteriorate, thousands of troops and police have been deployed in order to stop Bhutto and her supporters from undertaking their planned 180-mile, three-day protest march from Lahore to Islamabad against the state of emergency imposed last week.

Safdar Abbasi, a senator aide to Bhutto, said her supporters would storm the barricades, but police detained the first demonstrators who tried to approach her residence.

The Lahore police chief, Aftab Cheema, told the media in a speech outside Bhutto's house that 35-40 people were detained this morning for holding an unlawful demonstration and that there were probably suicide bombers in the city.

"We have very specific information that two to three foreign suicide bombers are on this mission," he said. "These people are trying to explode themselves in the rally or procession. They are foreign."

Bhutto escaped an assassination attempt by suicide bombers in October during a homecoming procession in Karachi. She was unhurt but about 140 people died in the attack.

With Bhutto under house arrest, her supporters started today's march without her. Shah Mahmood Qureshi, the president of Bhutto's party for Punjab, said he was leading a column of 200 vehicles from Lahore.

Police tried to stop them at several points and arrested some of the leaders, but the convoy was continuing southward, Qureshi said by phone.

As Musharraf tries to deal with the challenge from Bhutto, he faces increasing international pressure.

Commonwealth foreign ministers last night threatened Pakistan with expulsion from their organization if Musharraf failed to repeal the state of emergency and step down as army chief in the next nine days.

The government in Islamabad shrugged off the threat, saying it would manage the transition to democracy in its own way and on its own timetable.

The threat to suspend Pakistan from the Commonwealth, for the second time since Musharraf seized power in 1999, came from an "action group" meeting of foreign ministers in London. A joint statement condemned the suspension of Pakistan's constitution, describing the arrest of opposition activists and restrictions on the press as "violations against Commonwealth fundamental values of freedom of expression and human rights".

The foreign ministers welcomed Musharraf's pledge to hold elections by January 9, but said the vote "would not be credible unless the state of emergency is removed and constitutional rights of the people, political parties and independence of the judiciary are restored".

They said that unless he reversed the emergency, Pakistan's membership would be suspended on November 22. Mark Malloch-Brown, the minister for Africa, Asia and UN, who represented Britain at the meeting, later told the BBC: "This was a pretty tough message of one last chance."

Pakistan's high commission in London responded by saying Musharraf had already "outlined the road map for transition to full democracy in Pakistan".

Two major opposition parties, the PML-N and Jamaat-e-Islami, threatened to boycott the January elections yesterday.