Musharraf must end emergency, talk to Benazir: Negroponte

ISLAMABAD: The number two US diplomat pressed Pakistan’s President General Pervez Musharraf to scrap emergency rule and resume talks with the opposition in a hardening of Washington’s rhetoric on the crisis.   

In a blunt message to the military ruler, John Negroponte said on Sunday that Pakistan’s people deserved better than emergency rule, which was “not compatible” with a free and fair vote.

He met Musharraf and other key officials and also spoke by telephone with opposition leader and former premier Benazir Bhutto.

Negroponte said it was too early to talk of the success or failure of his diplomacy, admitting the situation had “polarised somewhat” with Benazir twice put under house arrest.

He urged Musharraf to cancel the emergency, release thousands of political opponents, lawyers and rights activists who have been rounded up and jailed, and lift curbs that have shut down private television news channels.

“We do not think that these kind of emergency measures are compatible with the kind of environment that is needed to conduct free and fair elections,” he said.   

Negroponte also urged Musharraf and Benazir to restart power-sharing talks they had been holding until recently “If steps were taken by both sides to move back towards the kind of reconciliation discussions they had been having previously, we think that could be very positive,” he said.

Musharraf told him he had taken or would take some of the steps “but that there remain several other issues that are yet to be considered or yet to be undertaken.”