Bhutto under heavy guard

LAHORE, PAKISTAN — Backed by hundreds of police officers, the government placed former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto under house arrest today to prevent a protest against President Pervez Musharraf, escalating a war of nerves before a deadline later this week for Musharraf to step down as army chief.

It was the second time in less than a week that the Pakistani president’s biggest rival has been confined to a home. She vowed to press ahead with an automobile caravan from this eastern city to Islamabad, the capital, to increase the pressure on Musharraf to rescind the emergency rule he imposed Nov. 3. But when supporters showed up this morning and began to chant, “Go, Musharraf, go!” officers hustled them into police vans and drove them away. There were reports that at least 1,500 Musharraf opponents had been arrested overnight.

Authorities said earlier that they would ban the rally because of the danger of suicide bombers. Dozens of police officers who swarmed around the house where Bhutto was staying tried to serve her with a seven-day detention order, but her aides refused to accept it.

An armored vehicle was parked outside the home, which belongs to a senator from Bhutto’s party. Steel and barbed-wire barricades were set up down the street and large trucks were parked across it. Sharpshooters took up positions on adjacent rooftops.

Farzana Raja, a member of parliament from Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party, was seized as she tried to cross the barricades.

Raja spoke of the efforts to stop Bhutto: “Stop her from what? Just to meet the people of Punjab, of Pakistan? That’s what Pakistan’s political culture is. It’s really sad that we are living in the Stone Age.”

The latest move appeared to be another example of the increasingly unpopular Musharraf cracking down to prevent protests from gaining steam, and then easing up to blunt foreign criticism.

Police put Bhutto under house arrest Friday, sealed off the demonstration venue and detained her supporters to halt a rally that day outside Islamabad.

On Sunday, Musharraf said he would hold parliamentary elections in early January. But opposition parties threatened to boycott the polls. Bhutto said elections under de facto martial law would be a sham.

While harshly critical of Musharraf, Bhutto has not ruled out cooperating with him. The two have been in talks on a power-sharing agreement, which the U.S. is known to favor in hopes of bolstering moderates in a country that is central to the Bush administration’s counter-terrorism strategy.

But she reiterated Monday that she had decided to suspend those negotiations, at least while the state of emergency prevails.

Bhutto said by telephone that her party would decide whether to boycott elections after seeing whether Musharraf complies with a law mandating that he step down as head of the army by Thursday, when his current term expires.

Musharraf cited the need for sweeping executive powers to tamp down a growing Islamic insurgency along Pakistan’s borders when he imposed emergency rule. But the thousands of people thrown into jail so far have included lawyers, rights activists and opposition figures.

Musharraf declared emergency rule days before the Supreme Court, led by an outspoken critic, was expected to rule on the legality of his reelection.

The Pakistani leader has come under intense domestic and international pressure to end emergency rule; on Monday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon urged him to do so and to release those who have been arrested.

The White House said Monday that Musharraf should lift the emergency decree before holding elections so that voting would be free of any government restrictions.

“The president thinks that we need to lift the emergency rule in order to have free and fair elections,” said White House Press Secretary Dana Perino, who added that Musharraf also must quit his army post and restore the country’s constitution. But she emphasized that the situation is evolving rapidly.

The Pakistani leader has refused to commit himself to any timetable for lifting the state of emergency.

One well-placed Western diplomat said he expected Musharraf to lift it within days, or at most a few weeks, because the Pakistani leader knows that elections held under such circumstances would not be credible in the eyes of the world.

The diplomat, speaking on condition of anonymity, also said Musharraf could shed his uniform within the next several days.

But the general has confounded expectations in the past and reneged on a previous promise to give up his army post.

Bhutto called for the appointment of an unbiased election commission and the restoration of judges whom Musharraf fired.

“Our hands and feet are tied. It would be a sham election,” Bhutto said. “Right now we are considering the option of boycotting.”

Other political parties also were considering a boycott.

Ahsan Iqbal, a spokesman for the Pakistan Muslim League-N, which is a rival of Bhutto’s party, said his party was also contemplating shunning the polls, but that a decision had not been reached because “our alliance cannot even hold a meeting. All our senior leadership is in jail.”

Jamaat-i-Islami, Pakistan’s largest Islamist party, has said that it will not participate in any election if the state of emergency remains in effect.

Analysts said it was likely that contacts were continuing between aides of Musharraf and Bhutto. In the meantime, they said, Bhutto, a shrewd public-relations strategist, was trying to crank up pressure on Musharraf through high-profile pieces of political theater, such as today’s planned caravan.

The motorcade was to snake through Punjab province, Pakistan’s most populous, picking up supporters en route before arriving a few days later in Islamabad, 185 miles from Lahore.

“The government is in a lose-lose situation,” Bhutto said in the telephone interview. “If they allow my rally to go ahead, there will be a sea of people. . . . And if they want to disrupt it, the size of the arrests and the size of the police deployment will show the size of the crowd.”

Still, analysts said Bhutto remained in a delicate position, trying to keep open the possibility of a deal while maintaining a public image of defiance against a military ruler whom many Pakistanis loathe.

“She has been trying to play both opposition [leader] and possible partner of Musharraf,” said Muhammad Badar Alam, the Lahore bureau chief for the Herald newsmagazine. But appearing willing to do business with Musharraf has hurt her, he said.

By coming to Lahore, Bhutto is hoping to recapture some of the magic that attended her previous return to Pakistan from exile, in 1986, when more than a million people greeted her here. She became Pakistan’s first female prime minister two years later.

If her party contests elections and wants any chance of coming out on top, it will have to do well in Punjab province, which is home to more than 60% of Pakistan’s 160 million people. Lahore, the capital, has long been Pakistan’s political and intellectual hub.

“She’s trying to bank upon the anti-government and anti-emergency sentiment that is quite strong in Lahore,” Alam said. “She must also be trying to consolidate her voter base not just in Lahore but in other districts of Punjab.”

For the planned caravan, Bhutto said she had requested security from Musharraf’s government. Her supporters fear a repeat of what happened Oct. 19 during her hours-long procession through the southern city of Karachi upon her return from self-imposed exile, when a suicide attack on her motorcade killed about 140 people.

“We keep hearing about militants being sent” to strike the motorcade, she said. “But we ask ourselves if we then be quiet because they threaten us, or do we think of the larger threat to our country?”

Punjab is also the stronghold of the Pakistan Muslim League-N, whose leader, former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, is an outspoken critic of Bhutto and the man Musharraf ousted in a 1999 coup.

Sharif has denounced Bhutto for her willingness to negotiate with Musharraf. His supporters contrast the treatment she has received with what happened to Sharif when he tried to return from exile in September. He was promptly deported.

Although Bhutto was blocked from holding her rally Friday, she has traveled around Islamabad with a government-provided escort and been feted by foreign diplomats.

In Lahore on Monday, she made an impromptu visit to the grave of Mohammed Iqbal, the national poet, and spoke unhindered to reporters.

“Ms. Bhutto is lucky,” said Ahsan Iqbal, the Pakistan Muslim League-N spokesman. “We envy her freedom and her party’s freedom of the last few days.”

However, Iqbal said that Sharif had sent Bhutto a letter over the weekend offering to join forces against Musharraf if she clarified her position on a few issues.

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The Times’ Washington Bureau contributed to this report.