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Date: Thu, 20 Sep 2007 10:41:24 -0400 (EDT)
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Pakistan schedules presidential election for Oct. 6
The Associated Press
Thursday, September 20, 2007
General Pervez Musharraf will seek a new five-year term as president in an election scheduled Oct. 6, officials said Thursday, even as his opponents urged the courts to stop him from running and vowed to quit Parliament in protest.
After Musharraf signaled his plan to resign as head of the Pakistani Army if he is re-elected, the Election Commission announced that the vote by federal and provincial lawmakers would be held early next month.
Musharraf, who seized power in a coup in 1999, aims to stay on as president despite a sharp drop in his popularity and growing pressure for the restoration of democracy. The governing coalition says it has enough votes to re-elect him.
Opposition parties are threatening to boycott the vote to deny it legitimacy. There is no sign they will field a candidate of their own.
Government officials confirmed that Musharraf intended to run. Information Minister Mohammed Ali Durrani said the announcement of the election date was "a good day in the history of Pakistan."
Musharraf's current term expires Nov. 15.
The main threat to Musharraf's plan appears to be its disputed legality. The Supreme Court continued Thursday to hear a raft of complaints, including those over recent changes to the election rules that favor Musharraf.
A ruling on the general's eligibility could be handed down within days.
Opponents - including Nawaz Sharif, an exiled former prime minister whose government fell to Musharraf's coup eight years ago, and a six-member alliance of Islamist parties - said their lawmakers would quit if the Election Commission accepted Musharraf's nomination papers.
They vowed to mount street protests as well as more legal challenges to stop the president.
"The letter and the spirit of the Constitution do not permit President Musharraf to be a candidate," said Sadiq ul-Farooq, a leader of Sharif's party, the Pakistan Muslim League.
The deputy information minister, Tariq Azim, dismissed the concerns of the opposition.
"The opposition should come up with its own candidate to participate in the contest, if they have any," he said.
The party of another former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, whose talks with Musharraf over a possible power-sharing deal have stalled, has threatened to join the opposition boycott unless the president relinquishes his army post first.
Musharraf became a key ally of the United States after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks there and the subsequent U.S. offensive in Afghanistan.
As well as facing calls for the restoration of democracy, he is struggling to contain a surge in violence by Taliban and Qaeda militants.
In the latest attack, a bomb exploded outside a hotel in the northern city of Swat on Thursday, killing a police officer and wounding four hotel guards, the police said.
<strong>Qaeda targets Pakistani chief</strong>
Osama bin Laden will soon make public a message declaring war on Musharraf, Al Qaeda announced Thursday, according to The Associated Press in Cairo.
The announcement was made as Qaeda released a new video in which bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, boasted that the United States was being defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts.
Speakers in the video promised continued fighting in Afghanistan, North Africa and the Darfur region of Sudan.
The messages are part of a stepped-up propaganda campaign by Qaeda around the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks by Islamic terrorists against the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon.
Earlier this month, bin Laden made public two messages - including his first appearance in a new video in nearly three years.
A banner posted on an Islamic militant Web site Thursday advertised that another message would be issued, although it did not say whether bin Laden would appear in a video or speak in an audiotape.
"Soon, God willing: 'Come to Jihad' from Sheik Osama bin Laden, God protect him," the banner read.
"Urgent, Al Qaeda declares war on the tyrant Pervez Musharraf and his apostate army, in the words of Osama bin Laden," the banner added.
Such advertisements usually precede the release of a video by one to three days, according to IntelCenter, a U.S. counterterrorism group that monitors militants' messages.
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