Musharraf Defends Emergency Rule Decision

General Pervez Musharraf today launched a media offensive to defend his declaration of emergency rule as the best way of countering rising militancy in Pakistan.

Seeking to wrest the spotlight from opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who has dominated the airwaves, Musharraf admitted that he considered resigning but felt he was the man to lead Pakistan to democracy.

"I am not a dictator, I want a democracy," he told Britain's Sky News. "The day when there is no turmoil in Pakistan, I will step down."

Meanwhile, with an eye on the all-important US audience, the general told the New York Times that the state of emergency was crucial to fair elections - a position the opposition strongly rejects.

"The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner," he told the paper.

In the latest protests, cricketer turned opposition leader Imran Khan was taken away when he emerged from hiding to join a student rally against emergency rule.

A spokesman for Khan's party said it was unclear whether he had been detained by police or students from an opposition religious party who had been trying to block his rally.

He had been greeted by scores of students shouting "go Musharraf go" when he appeared on the campus of Punjab university in the city of Lahore.

Khan, who leads a small opposition party, went into hiding after a state of emergency was declared on November 3 and thousands of opposition politicians, activists, lawyers and rights workers were rounded up.

A spokesman for Khan's party said he did not know who had detained him.

"A few men in civilian clothing, we don't know who they are, took him inside ... We cannot be sure if they are students or police," said the spokesman, Saifullah Khan Niazi.

In a hardening of her position, Bhutto yesterday called on a "contaminated" Musharraf to quit power, ruling out any further cooperation and saying that her party may boycott elections due by January 9.

"It is time for him to go. He must quit as president," she said by phone from the Lahore house where she was under house arrest. "I will not serve as prime minister as long as Musharraf is president."

The strong rhetoric marked a significant departure from her earlier position and could signal a momentous shift in Pakistan's unfolding power game.

Only a few days earlier she was refusing to rule out a power-sharing deal with the general, who imposed emergency rule 11 days ago. But analysts warned that it could still prove to be a gambit in a military-assisted return to power.

Bhutto was placed under house arrest on Monday night, thwarting plans to lead a "long march" motorcade across Punjab province to the capital, Islamabad.

Several thousand officers ringed the house and approach roads were blocked with barbed wire barricades and trucks filled with sand. For good measure, the front gate of the house - officially turned into a "sub-jail" - was locked from the outside.

Lahore police chief Aftab Cheema said there were also security worries, citing intelligence reports that up to three foreign suicide bombers had reached Lahore on a mission to kill Bhutto. "It is meant for her own safety," he said of the security arrangements.

Bhutto officials rejected the explanation as an excuse. In phone interviews Bhutto criticized Musharraf in unusually strong terms. "Negotiations between us have broken down over the massive use of police force ... There's no question now of getting this back on track because anyone who is associated with General Musharraf gets contaminated," she told Reuters.

Previously she had only called for him to resign as head of the army. "This is a break in relations," her spokesman, Farhatullah Babar, said.

A rival opposition leader, Nawaz Sharif, welcomed her apparent change of heart and called for a united opposition front to unseat Musharraf. "What I'm hearing on TV, her statements today that she has cut off all her links with Pervez Musharraf and wants him to resign from both offices, I think is a positive development and a step toward achieving the objectives of the opposition," he said by phone from Saudi Arabia where he lives in exile.

Bhutto has been under pressure to sever ties with Musharraf since March 9, when the military ruler sparked the present crisis through a clumsy attempt to fire the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.

Yesterday's steel-edged statements suggested she was close to a definitive break.

"That's the question that everyone is asking," said a senior diplomat in Islamabad. But, while calling the new statements "very strong", he was cautious about the likelihood of a sea change.

"It will be very hard for her to roll back [from this] but it's been done before," he said. "Pakistani politics has always been a very murky game."

International pressure continued to build, with Britain's foreign secretary, David Miliband, throwing his weight behind a Commonwealth threat to suspend Pakistan unless Musharraf rescinds emergency rule by November 22. UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon and President George Bush both urged Musharraf on Monday to lift the emergency.

If Musharraf fails to meet the Commonwealth's November 22 deadline, the diplomat predicted "increasing bilateral pressure" from western allies including his own country. "Considerations would flow from it, but I don't want to get into that now," he said.

The US, however, offered a cautious reaction. "We remain concerned ... [but] we are hopeful that moderate elements would join together," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters.

State repression continued across Pakistan. Thousands of people remained in jail, many of them lawyers. Ali Dayan Hasan of Human Rights Watch said 45% of high court lawyers in Baluchistan province were behind bars.

Yesterday the government strengthened a ban on news channels that had aired critical reports by banning the import of satellite dishes.

Private stations have been off-air since November 3 through a block on cable television, causing many viewers to switch to satellite receivers.

Meanwhile, Islamist violence in North-West Frontier province continued to worsen. The army said it had killed four fighters during an operation in the Swat Valley, a once peaceful tourist destination now being overrun by pro-Taliban insurgents.

A boy was killed in a suicide bombing on an internet cafe in Peshawar, police said.