Bhutto rules out power-sharing deal and says Musharraf must go

Bush's policy towards Pakistan has always been to shore up Musharraf, a man who had promised to carry out Bush's pro-western policies. To this end, and to further prop up Musharraf, a power sharing deal had been worked out with Benazir Bhutto, the leader of the country's largest opposition party.

Of course, this was all before Musharraf declared martial law, postponed the elections, put several judges under house arrest and charged three Pakistani politicians and a union leader with treason, a charge which carries the maximum penalty of death.

Since that little hiccup Bush's plans for Pakistan appear to be unravelling at an astonishing rate.

Ms Bhutto, who is under house arrest in Lahore, said there was no way she and her party could now work with the military leader. She said she was ready to join forces with another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, and other political groups to bring about democracy. "It is time for him to go. He must quit as President. 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," she told reporters by telephone.

The full impact of Ms Bhutto's comments will only become clear in the coming days. But, in theory, her call for General Musharraf not simply to stand down as head of the armed forces but to leave office altogether, suggests that the power-sharing deal brokered by the United States and Britain over the past two years is dead.

While Ms Bhutto has stepped back from other political pronouncements she has made, she would risk a massive blow to her credibility if she was now to re-enter negotiations with the general.

If taken at face value, Ms Bhutto's move suggests she has calculated that with General Musharraf under intense international pressure and with his public support at an all-time low, now is the time to strike. While Ms Bhutto's initial reaction to the imposition of a state of emergency 11 days ago was restrained, in the past week her comments have become increasingly strident.

"Musharraf himself is a hurdle in the way of democracy," Ms Bhutto told the network Geo TV, which along with all other Pakistani news channels remains off the air inside the country under emergency laws declared on 3 November. "In order to save Pakistan, Musharraf should resign." Asked directly whether she would serve under the general in a future government, she replied: "No."

The problem with Bush's Pakistan policy has always been that it wasn't a policy with Pakistan, it was a policy with Musharraf which stated that, as long as he pursued Taliban and al Qaeda forces in his country, he would continue to receive US aid. The only problem for Musharraf was that these policies were incredibly unpopular amongst large swathes of his own population.

Now, any deals to prop up Musharraf look shattered. I've said it before:

I know that Bush is keen to work out a power sharing deal with Bhutto in order to keep Musharraf in power and carrying out blatantly Western led policies, but there comes a point when even this White House must concede that Musharraf is damaged goods.

And, with Bhutto now saying that she can no longer envisage working with Musharraf at any point in the future, the time has surely come for even Bush to realise that the game is up for his favourite military dictator.

Yesterday was to have been the day that Ms Bhutto and her followers left Lahore for a "long march" to Islamabad in an effort to rally support in the crucial province of Punjab, not just for her Pakistan's People's Party's (PPP) campaign for scheduled parliamentary elections but also against the state of emergency.

Instead, Ms Bhutto found herself confined inside the house of a senior party member in Lahore, with police blocking off all roads with barricades and barbed wire. Throughout the day, small groups of her supporters arrived chanting slogans in support of the detained political leader only to be arrested by police, with the television cameras making much of the stage-managed drama.

I happen to agree that much of this drama is being stage managed for political effect, but by behaving in the way that he has, Musharraf has not made it difficult for Bhutto to portray herself as the victim here, fighting to restore democracy.

In phone interviews Bhutto criticised 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.

She has significantly upped the ante from her previous demands that Musharraf simply remove his uniform and is now calling for him to go. That's a further indication of how badly Musharraf has played his hand here.

Dana Perino has stated that, "We remain concerned ... [but] we are hopeful that moderate elements would join together." Meaning that, even at this late junction, the US are not yet ready to give up on their favourite military dictator.

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Tags: Pakistan, Musharraf, Bhutto, Bush, emergency powers, elections