Today Benazir Bhutto was placed for the second time under
house arrest by the Pakistani police in order to prevent her from holding her
planned march of 180 miles from
Hundreds of police officers surrounded her house and used barbed wire and trucks loaded with sand to block the neighborhood.
The officers arrested party workers who tried to cut through the police barricades.
Ms. Bhutto urged President Musharraf to quit from his position as a president declaring that she would never serve under him.
Until now she only asked him to drop his uniform and become a civilian president, but this is the first time when she had asked him to resign for good from presidency.
She said: “It is time for him to go. He must quit as president,” Reuters reports.
Some of her party workers tried to get across the barricades, but they were detained by the police and thrown into police vans.
Ms. Bhutto was placed under house arrest by the Pakistani government for the second time in five days, this time for seven days, according to the New York Times.
Still it remained unclear of how would Ms. Bhutto react to this move.
Police officers were waiting for Bhutto’s supporters outside government buildings also.
According to CNN, Bhutto doesn’t want to acknowledge her house arrest. She didn’t want to sign the warrant on pretends that she was not available at that time.
According to a vice president of the party, Yousuf Arza Giani, all talks with the government were broken off. He added: “It’s really bad, extremely bad.”
Tariq Azim Khan, a government spokesman, said that she could
be the target of another suicide-bomb attack, like the one that occurred on
October 18, at her homecoming in
Last night Commonwealth foreign ministers warned Musharraf
that unless he drops the state of emergency and his post as army chief in the
next nine days,
This is the second time when
The issued statement said regarding the arrest of the opposition activists and restriction of the press as “violations against Commonwealth fundamental values of freedom of expression and human rights.”
Musharraf said on Sunday that the elections will be held by January 9 and this statement was welcomed by foreign ministers. Still they’ve said that the vote “would not be credible unless the state of emergency is removed and constitutional rights of the people, political parties and independence of the judiciary are restored,” Guardian Unlimited quotes.
On Monday two opposition parties said that they will boycott the elections if they are held under the emergency rule.