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ISLAMABAD : Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced Thursday that elections will be held before February 15 and confirmed his pledge to quit as army chief, state media said Thursday.
The statement came hours after US President George W. Bush telephoned Musharraf to urge him to repeal a state of emergency, hold elections in January and quit as army chief of the nuclear-armed Islamic republic.
"General elections in the country would be held by February 15 next year," the official Associated Press of Pakistan quoted Musharraf saying after chairing a meeting of the National Security Council.
State television also reported that Musharraf renewed his pledge to quit as army chief before taking the oath for his second term in office, but did not give a date, state television said.
Musharraf's re-election for another five-year term in office is still awaiting validation by the Supreme Court -- thought to be the main reason that Musharraf declared a state of emergency on Saturday.
The report gave no further details but it came after the attorney general, Malik Mohammad Qayyum, told AFP earlier Thursday that the polls would be in February.
"The emergency will be lifted in one or two months," Qayyum, the government's chief lawyer, added.
Pakistani police meanwhile stepped up a crackdown on the opposition, rounding up hundreds of supporters of ex-premier Benazir Bhutto and charged four people with treason.
Bhutto's party said its activists were targeted to head off a major protest on Friday in the garrison city of Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, and a planned "long march" from Lahore to Islamabad next week.
Musharraf imposed the state of emergency citing growing Islamic militancy and a meddlesome judiciary. He suspended the constitution, sacked the chief justice and clamped curbs on the media.
The move has sparked days of sporadic protests and led to more than 3,000 arrests, the latest involving supporters of Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
"Well over 600 party activists have been arrested and many of our leaders have gone underground. The crackdown is continuing," senior party leader Raza Rabbani told AFP.
Police sources confirmed the arrests of only 140 PPP workers.
Police warned that suicide bombers had infiltrated Rawalpindi ahead of Bhutto's protest.
"We have very specific intelligence reports that up to eight suicide bombers have entered Rawalpindi," city police chief Saud Aziz told AFP.
"Naturally they will target big public meetings like what you have seen in Karachi," he added. Twin suicide blasts killed 139 people in Karachi at Bhutto's October 18 homecoming parade, which ended her eight years in exile.
Rabbani said the rally was "definitely on."
Many in Pakistan regard Bhutto with scepticism, expecting she will still reach a proposed power-sharing deal with Musharraf that would bring two US-friendly political leaders under one banner.
Meanwhile in Karachi, authorities charged three politicians from small opposition parties and a trade union leader with sedition for making speeches against Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule, court officials said.
The four were remanded in custody for two weeks by a court. The charge carries a maximum sentence of death.
On Wednesday, Karachi police registered sedition cases against eight lawyers, including a woman. The lawyers have gone into hiding.
Earlier, in a sign of growing international anger at emergency rule, Bush said he had given Musharraf -- a crucial US ally in the "war on terror" -- a message that was "very plain, very easy to understand."
"And that is: The United States wants you to have the elections as scheduled and take your uniform off."
Pakistan's foreign ministry, however, put a more positive spin on the Bush-Musharraf talks, saying the US leader had praised Musharraf's leadership.
It admitted that Bush "mentioned about US concerns over return to civilian democratic rule and early elections, as had been originally planned by the president."
While Britain and France also demanded that polls be held on time, senior US officials warned that Washington had no option but to pursue its long-term relationship with Islamabad because of its frontline role in fighting Taliban and Al-Qaeda extremists.
- AFP /ls
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