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ISLAMABAD- Pakistan's parliament Monday elected a staunch aide of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto as the country's new prime minister, setting up a showdown with US ally President Pervez Musharraf.
Yousuf Raza Gilani, a former parliament speaker who spent five years in jail under Musharraf's regime, won the position as expected with a big majority from Bhutto's party and its allies in the incoming coalition government.
Supporters shouted "Long Live Bhutto!" and "Go, Musharraf, Go!" as the result was announced. Bhutto's teenage son Bilawal Bhutto Zardari, sitting in the public gallery, wiped away tears and then shook hands with Gilani.
"Yousuf Raza Gilani commands the majority of the members. Please come forward and take the seat of leader of the house," parliamentary speaker Fahmida Mirza said.
Gilani won 264 votes in the 342-seat lower house of parliament, while pro-Musharraf candidate Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi secured 42 votes. There were several abstentions.
Musharraf, who seized power in a military coup in 1999, is set to swear in the new prime minister on Tuesday.
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) emerged as the biggest party from the February 18 vote and formed a coalition with the party of former premier Nawaz Sharif and two smaller groupings after routing Musharraf's allies.
Bhutto was assassinated in a suicide attack at an election rally in December. The coalition is headed for a confrontation with Musharraf after vowing to reinstate sacked judges who could challenge the president's grip on power.
Musharraf deposed the chief justice and dozens of other judges under a state of emergency in November, when it looked like the Supreme Court might overturn his October re-election as president.
A senior member of Sharif's party said that several of the judges who remain under detention, including former Supreme Court chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, would be free as soon as the new premier is sworn in.
Gilani himself was in prison for half a decade on corruption charges, which he said were cooked up by Musharraf's regime to discredit him.
His spell in prison won him respect within the PPP's ranks.
The charges dated from his time as speaker during Bhutto's second term in power from 1993 to 1996.
He was also a minister during her first term from 1988 to 1990. There is speculation that Gilani will be a stop-gap premier until Bhutto's widower Asif Ali Zardari, who is not an MP, becomes eligible to stand for the post by contesting a by-election in May.
But local daily The News quoted Zardari as denying this, saying that he is not interested in the job and that Gilani would be prime minister "for five years and not for three months."
A Pakistani court earlier Monday acquitted Zardari of involvement in the 1996 murder of a retired judge, his lawyer said, the latest in a string of cases against him that have been dropped in the past month.
Musharraf on Sunday pledged his full support to the new coalition, hailing the start of what he called a "real democratic era" in the country, which has been plagued for months by violence linked to Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
In the latest militant attack in the nuclear-armed nation, 100 people were injured when insurgents in a border town blew up 36 tankers supplying fuel to US and NATO troops in neighbouring Afghanistan. - AFP/vm
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