[NYTr] Thousands of Police Block Pakistan Rally

[All the News That Doesn't Fit]

The New York Times - dated Nov 10; posted Nov 9, 2007


Thousands of Police Block Pakistan Rally

By JANE PERLEZ and DAVID ROHDE

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 9 — In a huge show of force, the Pakistani
government stopped a protest rally by the opposition leader, Benazir
Bhutto, before it started today, blanketing the rally site with
thousands of police, blocking roads to stop demonstrators, and
barricading Ms. Bhutto inside her residence in Islamabad.

In Rawalpindi, the garrison town close to Islamabad, the capital, where
the rally had been due to take place, double lines of police and police
vans prevented most of the thousands of demonstrators from entering the
city to protest against the emergency rule declared in the country by
the president, Gen. Pervez Musharraf, six days ago. Thousands of party
workers had already been arrested over the past few days, party
officials said.

At Ms. Bhutto’s residence, lines of police, barbed wire and concrete
barricades made Ms. Bhutto a virtual hostage. Amid chaotic scenes, an
attempt by Ms. Bhutto to leave in a white four-wheel drive car was
thwarted by the police as they moved an armored personnel car and a
police bus to block her way.

But late in the afternoon, in what appeared to be a carefully
stage-managed move agreed with the government, Ms. Bhutto emerged from
her house and made a speech that was broadcast on official Pakistani
television.

Ms. Bhutto said she was “listening to the voice of my conscience” and
appealed to the government to end the emergency rule.

A spokesman for President Bush, Gordon D. Johndroe, called for the
release of Ms. Bhutto, her supporters, other party members and all
protesters. “It is crucial for Pakistan’s future that moderate
political forces work together to bring Pakistan back on the path to
democracy,” he said in a statement.

The Pakistan government later said that Ms. Bhutto’s detention would be
lifted tonight, and that there had been credible evidence she could
have been the target of a terrorist attack during the rally.

Meanwhile, away from the political stand-off in Islamabad and
Rawalpindi, violence continued in the north-west of Pakistan in
Peshawar where a bomb exploded at the home of a government minister for
political affairs, Amir Muqam, killing at least four people, The
Associated Press reported. Police said the bombing was a suicide attack.

In Rawalpindi, dump trucks blocked roads, preventing access to Liaquat
Park, where the rally was due to be held, and shutting down the city
center. By late afternoon, tensions between police and the small groups
of protesters who had managed to enter the city started to mount, and
there were some arrests and use of tear gas, but later the tensions
more or less dissipated, and police began to leave the city.

As many as 5,000 party workers had been arrested across the country
over the last three days, party officials said, and today any groups of
people that formed on the street were immediately moved on by police.

The authorities said there were 8,500 police on the streets of
Rawalpindi, and there were many more plain clothes officers and
intelligence officials. Some demonstrators threw stones at the police
and were hauled off in vans.

But the detention by police of Ms. Bhutto at her home appeared to
prevent her party activists from organizing any significant protest in
Rawalpindi, and many said they were still waiting for orders to stage a
major demonstration.

“As soon as she comes to Rawalpindi, we will go and break the
barriers,” said Shiaz Kayani, a Pakistan Peoples Party district
president.

At Ms. Bhutto’s residence, some party workers said Ms. Bhutto was under
house arrest, but the government said no official papers had been
issued, and Ms. Bhutto’s chief political aide, Nadeem Khan, speaking to
reporters outside the house, said detention orders had not arrived.

“She is not under house arrest,” a superintendent of police, Aftab
Nasir, told the official Pakistani press agency. “Only the security has
been enhanced.”

A government spokesman, Tariq Azim Khan, said this evening that a
restraining order preventing Ms. Bhutto from leaving her house would
probably be lifted tonight.

He said Ms. Bhutto was not under house arrest. "Probably the
restraining order will be removed tonight,” Mr. Khan said. “It was try
to get her not to lead the rally. There was credible information that
she would be the target of an attack.”

In mid-October, Ms. Bhutto’s homecoming procession in Karachi was
attacked by a suicide bomber, killing more than a hundred people. Mr.
Khan said she had not followed the government’s warnings. “Last time
she wouldn’t listen, and that resulted in 140 deaths,” Mr. Khan said.

In her speech in front of her house, Ms. Bhutto said that she had not
spoken to General Musharraf and would not negotiate with him until
emergency rule was ended and the Constitution revived. “I have been
illegally stopped by barbed wired and blockades,” she said. She said
she still intended to go ahead with a long march through Punjab
Province planned for early next week.

Police were arresting any Pakistan Peoples Party worker who showed up
near Ms. Bhutto’s residence, and by early afternoon, at least 20
workers, including at least 6 females, had been arrested.

Workers shouted “Prime minister Benazir!” before being shoved into
police buses and vans.

Aides to General Musharraf said that they hoped Ms. Bhutto would now
cancel the demonstration because it was forbidden under the emergency
rule.

The rally that was scheduled today in Rawalpindi has assumed critical
importance in the political machinations between Ms. Bhutto, who served
twice as prime minister and wants to return to power, and General
Musharraf.

Outwardly, the stand-off today appeared to deepen the confrontation
between the two, making Ms. Bhutto an opponent of General Musharraf
rather than a partner with him in the transition to democracy that she
and her American sponsors who helped negotiate her return to Pakistan
envisaged.

Behind the scenes, however, the strategies for both sides for the day
were probably worked out in advance, analysts said, in order to give
each side a face-saving way to avoid a potentially bloody clash on the
streets.

The government arrested a large number of potential protesters before
the rally, sealed the protest location, and cordoned off the area
around it. Ms. Bhutto had already tried to leave her house earlier
today to go to the protest, but her car was blocked when it tried to
leave by the side entrance, her press aide, Sherry Rehman, told
reporters.

At one point, Ms. Rehman said that Ms. Bhutto would be “leading the
protest, but not joining it.”

In another sign of what seemed like behind-the-scenes co-ordination
between Ms. Bhutto and the authorities, Ms. Bhutto’s voice came over
official Pakistani television at 4 p.m. this afternoon as she made a
long speech setting out her demands. A still picture of her appeared on
the screen while she spoke.

Ms. Bhutto has rejected the announcement that the president made on
Thursday that parliamentary elections would be held by Feb. 15. She
said his announcement was “vague” and it also fell short of her demands
that he relinquish his role as head of the Army and end emergency rule.

But Ms. Bhutto and General Musharraf are described by Western diplomats
as continuing to negotiate a power-sharing deal that was envisaged when
she returned to Pakistan from self-imposed exile abroad last month.

“If the tensions persist, the negotiations might be in jeopardy,” said
Hasan Askari Rizvi, a political and military analyst in Lahore who also
lectures at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns
Hopkins University in the United States.

“The stage is set for a serious confrontation with massive arrests
within a couple of days,” Mr. Rizvi said. Adding to the government’s
troubles, Mr. Rivzi, said was the pledge Thursday by Jamaat Islaami, a
religious party, that it would stage large protests if General
Musharraf did not step down as leader of the military by November 15.

Mr. Rizvi said there was no sign of General Musharraf renouncing his
military role.

“If Musharraf can contain these protests for three days, fine,” he
said. “But if the protests spread to cities and persist for a week then
Musharraf will have problems.”

[Salman Masood contributed reporting from Islamabad and Steven Lee Myers
from Crawford, Texas.]