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LAHORE, Pakistan : Police in Pakistan arrested cricket legend Imran Khan and later charged him under anti-terrorism laws after he emerged from hiding to join a student protest on Wednesday.
He was picked up as former premier Benazir Bhutto hammered the phones from under house arrest in an attempt to forge a united opposition front against a state of emergency imposed by President Pervez Musharraf.
She told AFP she would call Nawaz Sharif, another ex-premier, to ask him to form an alliance uniting two of Pakistan's biggest opposition parties.
"The aim... will be to form a common front, to formulate a joint strategy for saving democracy," she said by telephone from an aide's house where she is being kept under house arrest.
Bhutto has spoken to nine other leading political opponents of Musharraf in the past two days, a senior aide in her party told AFP.
One of them was Khan, who appeared in public at a university campus in the eastern city of Lahore for the first time since he slipped out of detention last week.
Amid chaotic scenes, he was lifted onto the shoulders of demonstrators but quickly seized by a crowd of radicals then pushed into a nearby building. He was later bundled into a white van and handed over to police.
"A case has been registered against Imran Khan. He has been charged under the anti-terrorism act," local police officer Naveed Arshad told AFP.
Lahore police chief Malik Mohammad Iqbal earlier said that the former cricket star would be charged partly because he was "spreading hatred".
"Through his speeches he has been inciting people to pick up arms, he has been calling for civil disobedience, he was spreading hatred," Iqbal told AFP.
Khan, who led Pakistan to cricket World Cup glory in 1992, founded a small but vocal opposition party and called for Musharraf to be hanged for treason after the military ruler imposed emergency rule on November 3.
"I came to the university to lead a rally of students against the dictator Musharraf and his illegal actions," he told AFP as he was whisked away.
"I have achieved my purpose. I have started the student movement."
Bhutto remained under house arrest in Lahore to prevent her leading a mass procession against emergency rule, after earlier calling on Musharraf to quit and vowing never to serve under him in government.
A senior security official in Lahore said Bhutto's house arrest was likely to continue at least until Thursday. Hundreds of police were still outside her house, which is surrounded by barbed wire.
She and the other opposition leaders are planning to stage an all-parties conference later this month to decide on a joint strategy which would include restoring the constitution suspended by Musharraf.
The military ruler has promised general elections by January 9 - although still under the state of emergency - and vowed on Wednesday not to resign until the political turmoil was over.
Interviewed on Britain's Sky News television, he defended his decision to impose emergency rule.
"The day when there is no turmoil in Pakistan, I will step down," he said. "I am not a dictator, I want a democracy."
Washington, which views Musharraf as a key ally in its "war on terror", is dispatching John Negroponte, the deputy to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, to Islamabad this week to urge an end to the emergency.
"In order to have free and fair elections, they need to be done without a state of emergency in place," White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said. "It would be hard to imagine having free and fair elections under a state of emergency."
Pakistan's election commission met on Wednesday to study a date for the vote, but a spokesman said there would be no announcement until after November 20.
Meanwhile, the Swiss government said it was temporarily suspending weapons exports to Pakistan in light of the crisis.
Pakistan is still awaiting delivery of some 15 anti-aircraft batteries and ammunition from Switzerland out of an initial order of 21 such systems. - AFP/de
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