Benazir predicts mid-term polls, Gen to head for US

Predicting that Pakistan could be heading for a mid-term poll in view of the prevailing deadlock between Pervez Musharraf and the Opposition...

Predicting that Pakistan could be heading for a mid-term poll in view of the prevailing deadlock between Pervez Musharraf and the Opposition parties over the presidential powers assumed by him, former premier Benazir Bhutto has said she would return from her self exile to contest elections.

‘‘Make preparation for my arrival; this time I want you to get me a two-third majority, not just a simple majority,’’ Bhutto told a meeting of top-rung leaders of her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), which won the highest number of votes in last October’s general elections.

Following President Musharraf’s comments that he has no plans to strike a compromise with Bhutto and deposed premier Nawaz Sharif’s party to end the constitutional impasse between him and the Opposition, Bhutto convened a meeting of her senior leaders in Dubai on Saturday. Criticising Musharraf for ‘‘rewriting the constitution’’ which was drafted by her father and ex-PM Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto, she said: ‘‘we will defend the 1973 constitution. My father accepted martyrdom but he didn’t bargain with the military rulers’’.

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The PPP and Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), PML-N, along with the Muthahida Majlis-e-Amal have disrupted Parliament for several weeks questioning the legality of Musharraf’s presidency and the constitutional amendments promulgated by him to empower himself with powers to dismiss Parliament.

Meanwhile, the Pakistan Foreign Office has announced that President Musharraf will visit the United States in June this year to hold wide-ranging talks with the US President George W. Bush on important bilateral, regional and international issues. Musharraf would go to Washington on the special invitation of Bush.

However, the officials were not sure when Prime Minister Mir Zafarullah Jamali would visit the US. Jamali cancelled his scheduled visit on March 28 in view of the anti-US sentiments during the US-led war on Iraq, local daily Dawn quoted the officials as saying.

The visits of Jamali and Musharraf were worked out early this year during the US tour of Foreign Minister Khurshid Muhammad Kasuri.

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As per the schedule drawn by Kasuri in consultations with US officials, Jamali would make his maiden visit to Washington followed by Musharraf’s visit in June.