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LAHORE, Pakistan : Benazir Bhutto sought Wednesday to forge a united front against Pakistan's Pervez Musharraf as the United States pressed the increasingly isolated military ruler to end emergency rule.
Bhutto, a two-time former premier, has begun reaching out to other leaders of the fractious opposition after breaking off with Musharraf, urging him to resign as president and vowing never to serve under him in government.
She remained under house arrest in the eastern city of Lahore, where around 1,000 police maintained their security stranglehold around a residence surrounded by barbed wire and barricades.
Meanwhile Washington, which views Musharraf's Pakistan as a key ally in its "war on terror," is despatching John Negroponte, the deputy to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to Islamabad later this week.
Negroponte, who will be the highest-ranking US official to visit since the crisis erupted, will press for an end to the emergency.
Interviewed by the New York Times and other newspapers, Musharraf rejected calls by Rice to rescind the measures, which he has indicated would continue until general elections promised by January 9.
"I totally disagree with her," Musharraf said. "The emergency is to ensure elections go in an undisturbed manner."
US President George W. Bush called for a swift return to democracy.
"He understands the stakes of the war, and I do believe he understands the importance of democracy," Bush told the Fox Business Network.
"He's agreed to hold elections in January, and he's agreed to take his uniform off. And our judgement is that the sooner he can suspend his emergency decree, the faster Pakistan gets back on the road to democracy," he said.
In Lahore, Bhutto followed up her rhetoric against Musharraf, making ice-breaking phone calls to the party of exiled PM and one-time rival Nawaz Sharif, former cricketer Imran Khan, and even the Islamic fundamentalists she once shunned.
"It is over with Musharraf," Bhutto said. "I want to build an alliance, a single-point agenda for the restoration of democracy."
Analysts said her break with Musharraf, with whom she had previously held Western-backed power-sharing talks, could help unite the opposition.
Significantly many of her counterparts, including Sharif, gave a positive reaction to their contacts with Bhutto.
"For the first time, I see a possibility of the opposition agreeing on a united stance," political analyst Shafqat Mahmood told AFP, forecasting they would coalesce around a one- or two-point agenda.
The first would be to push Musharraf to quit, and the second would be for the opposition to boycott the elections, robbing them of credibility.
A united opposition could produce the "street power" to force Musharraf to either back down on emergency rule or step down altogether, analysts say.
It was unclear when Bhutto's seven-day house arrest order -- issued in the early hours of Tuesday to prevent her leading a mass procession against the state of emergency -- would be lifted.
A senior security official in Lahore said it was set to continue at least during Wednesday, with police concerned she may still try to join the rally.
Four Pakistan intelligence agencies reported the presence of two Egyptians in Lahore who could try to target a gathering of her party, a top government official told AFP.
"It would have been a huge risk to allow the march. It's a very real threat and this threat was conveyed to her people," the official said.
Meanwhile Pakistan's national assembly will be automatically dissolved at midnight Thursday (1900 GMT) at the end of its five-year term, paving the way for fresh general elections.
An interim government will be sworn in Friday, deputy information minister Tariq Azeem said.
- AFP/ir
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