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  • Bhutto set to take on the regime

    Bhutto set to take on the regime


    Twice-sacked PM aims to defy jail sentence and lead again, denouncing Straw's support for asset investigation

    Luke Harding, South Asia correspondent
    Tuesday January 30, 2001
    The Guardian

    Benazir Bhutto, Islam's first woman prime minister, has revealed plans to attempt a high-risk political comeback by returning from exile soon, putting herself on a collision course with Pakistan's ruling generals.

    In a telephone interview she told the Guardian that she said she intended to go home "sooner rather than later", and that she was determined to play a "political role" in Pakistan's future.

    Ms Bhutto, whose two terms as prime minister both ended in her dismissal by presidents on the grounds of corruption and mismanagement, said she hoped to "revive" democracy. After governing from 1988 to 1990 and 1993 to 1996, she fled in 1999 shortly before a court sentenced her to five years in jail for taking huge kickbacks.

    Article continues
    Last week she shrugged off the prospect of imprisonment. "I remain the single most important political force in the country," she said, adding that her family's history reflected Pakistan's own struggle with dictatorship.

    Five corruption cases are pending against Ms Bhutto in Pakistan. Her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, has been charged with eight and is in jail in Karachi.

    There is a warrant for her arrest. But said she would return home, even if the "regime jails me, disqualifies me, or seeks to restrict me in any way" from trying to revive Pakistan's shattered democracy.

    Their critics accuse Ms Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif, twice elected prime minister after her dismissal, of driving Pakistani politics and the economy ever lower. But the euphoria which came when General Pervez Musharraf deposed Mr Sharif and assumed the title of chief executive had evaporated, Ms Bhutto said.

    His plans to revive the economy and restore accountability were a "shambles". Pakistan was divided and on its way to being a "failed state". The only beneficiaries were clerics who wanted the "Talibanisation" of the country.

    Ms Bhutto also bitterly condemned the recent decision by the home secretary, Jack Straw, to help Pakistani prosecutors who have begun investigating her overseas wealth.

    In November a senior home office official went to Islamabad to meet members of Pakistan's National Accountability Bureau. They allege that Ms Bhutto and her husband embezzled huge sums during her time in power. Mr Zardari is accused of buying a nine-bedroom mansion - Rockwood House - with the proceeds of drug deals.

    Ms Bhutto denied that she had done anything wrong, and said the case against her husband - instigated by her successor as prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, in September 1997 - was "trumped up". The prosecution's two key witnesses were tortured to give false evidence, she alleged.

    The home secretary had failed to appreciate the pressure which martial rule put on the judiciary's handling of these cases.

    "I believe Mr Straw should reject a request by a military dictator," she said. "For Mr Straw it is just a request. For my family it is the threat of death."

    Her "innocent father", President Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, was executed in 1979 at the behest of another general, Zia ul-Haq, after being convicted by a handful of partisan judges, she said.

    She would not clarify in the interview what properties she owned in Britain, but insisted that all her assets there were "legitimate".

    In October prosecutors in Pakistan released details of 26 bank accounts and 14 residences allegedly owned by Ms Bhutto and Mr Zardari, with a value of $1.5bn (about £1bn). Five of them were in Britain.

    They included Rockwood House, valued at£3.5m; properties in Knightsbridge, Chelsea and Hammersmith; and bank accounts with Barclays, NatWest, the Midland (now part of HSBC) and Harrods. She also allegedly owns houses in France and a stud farm in Texas.

    She declined to say whether Mr Zardari was the true owner of Rockwood House, but said that "if" he had bought the property it was "his legal right to do so". His old house in Karachi, where he lived before their arranged marriage in December 1997, was much bigger, she added.

    She said there was no proof that any of her foreign assets had been bought with money stolen from the Pakistani exchequer. She also denied that Jack Straw had frozen her assets in Britain, at Islamabad's request. The Home Office refused to confirm or deny this.

    "We both hail from privileged families. Nothing we own is tied to any illegal activity," she insisted.

    Ms Bhutto denied that her decision to move last year from London to Dubai was connected to the British government's investigation of her affairs. Foreign Office sources have hinted that she left for the Gulf because the net was closing on her, but Ms Bhutto insisted that she had left for "family reasons" and planned to return to Britain soon.

    Under an agreement with the United Arab Emirates, she is prevented from making political statements. Her chief political foe, Nawaz Sharif, is under a similar ban after being sent into exile in Saudi Arabia last month from prison in Pakistan.

    Both the main parties in Pakistan, Mr Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League and Ms Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party, have been left leaderless and divided.

    Ms Bhutto, who is 47, said she had missed having a husband with her in the "bloom of life". "The years have taken their toll and we both suffer from hypertension," she said. She said her husband reminded her of King Lear and, in a reference to Lear's words in the storm scene, added: "I do believe my husband is more sinned against than sinning."

    The couple have three children: a son, Bilawal, 11, and two daughters, Bakhtwar, nine, and Aseefa, seven. "I have been married for 13 years and my husband has begun his eighth year in prison. My children have missed out on having a father in the crucial years of their upbringing. It saddens me when I think how heavy a price we have paid."

    Ms Bhutto claimed that Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist based in Afghanistan, was partly behind her downfall as prime minister. In 1989 he paid $10m to try to get her out, by lobbying for a no-confidence vote against her, she said, and in the 1980s, when he was unknown in the west, he also funded Pakistani generals and Mr Sharif to try to topple her.

    Ms Bhutto claimed that "extremist forces" who fought in Afghanistan against the occupying Soviet army had wanted to get rid of her so that they could turn Pakistan into a base for Islamic extremism.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/internatio...430701,00.html
    I wonder how this is going to work out.

    Pakistan is already facing a turbulent time, both internationally and internally.

    This is hardly the time to add another input into the confusion.


    "Some have learnt many Tricks of sly Evasion, Instead of Truth they use Equivocation, And eke it out with mental Reservation, Which is to good Men an Abomination."

    I don't have to attend every argument I'm invited to.

    HAKUNA MATATA

  • #2
    Ray we've been awaiting her arrival since 1997. "I'm coming, I'm coming..." Makes you wonder if its the transcript of a porn-flick.

    But she SHOULD! Come back and face trial. There's very little the government has on her. I mean the bulk of the evidence was on Zardari and they couldn't yet get him convicted... She's full of crap and the typical rile up the population, play with emotions kinda leader.

    PPPP - Benazir would be a very good party in Pakistan. The Sharif and Bhutto family have been nothing but plunderers of Pakistani wealth.

    Comment


    • #3
      The Sharif and Bhutto family have been nothing but plunderers of Pakistani wealth.
      Considering the amount of wealth plundered by the Pak military, thats an odd statement to make. Not that it means that the Bhutto-Sharif combine may have been any less kleptocratic.

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