ISLAMABAD: President Pervez Musharraf said on Thursday that recent political violence over the suspension of Pakistan's chief justice was the result of a conspiracy to stoke ethnic tensions.
Around 40 people were killed in Karachi on May 12 during the country's worst ethnic clashes for two decades the bloody climax to two months of protests against the removal of top judge Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry.
The violence started between pro- and anti-government camps but developed into fighting between mohajirs, or people whose families fled India after partition in 1947, and Pashtuns hailing from northwest Pakistan.
"There are certain elements who gave ethnic colour to the crisis in a bid to create further chaos and cause more bloodshed in Karachi," Musharraf told a public rally in the central town of Dera Ghazi Khan.
"However the conspiracy hatched by these elements cannot work as political groups have already begun discussing ways to promote and preserve peace in Karachi," he said in the televised address.
The president said a three-day strike scheduled by Pashtun parties in Karachi this weekend had been called off as a result of the negotiations.
He did not identify which "elements" were responsible.
New York-based Human Rights Watch has alleged that Musharraf's government and his allies "deliberately sought to foment violence" in Karachi while police did nothing.
Pashtuns and mohajirs have a long history of enmity in the city. Thousands of people have died in ethnic violence in the volatile southern port city since the 1980s.
Musharraf suspended Chaudhry, the head of the country's Supreme Court, on March 9 on charges of misconduct, including that he used his position to get official jobs for his son.
The president's opponents say he wants to weaken the courts ahead of possible legal challenges to his bid to remain army chief past the constitutional time limit of the end of the year.
General Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup in 1999.
