Pak emergency to be lifted in a month

Pakistan will lift its emergency rule in a month, a top official said yesterday, as former premier Benazir Bhutto left her home for the first time since the government lifted her house arrest.
Attorney General Malik Mohammad Qayyum said the state of emergency, imposed in the nuclear-armed nation a week ago by President Pervez Musharraf, "is likely to be lifted in a month."
His comments came as the United States added pressure on Musharraf to end the emergency and set a firm date for legislative elections, which he has so far only said will be held by mid-February.
"It is mainly because of the law and order situation in some parts of the country," Qayyum told private Geo television.
"We hope it will continue to improve as it is improving now."
He told AFP separately, however, that emergency rule would be lifted "after a month."
Benazir Bhutto, for her part, was driven out of her heavily guarded Islamabad home for talks with party officials, civil society leaders and foreign diplomats, a day after she was blocked from leading a protest rally against Musharraf.
House arrest was imposed because of what the government said was a security risk surrounding the rally in nearby Rawalpindi, and was lifted overnight.
Benazir Bhutto's October 18 homecoming parade in Karachi after eight years in exile was hit by a double suicide bombing that killed 139 people.
"The order was given in view of a specific security situation and now that situation has passed," interior secretary Kamal Shah told AFP.
Musharraf, who took power in a 1999 coup, cited growing Islamic militancy and meddling by the judiciary for imposing emergency rule a week ago, when he suspended the constitution, sacked the chief justice and imposed media curbs.
His move came amid government jitters days ahead of a Supreme Court ruling on the validity of his October 6 presidential election victory.
The military ruler has promised to quit as army chief when the new Supreme Court has validated his victory.
But Benazir Bhutto has dismissed the pledges as too vague and will lead a protest march starting Tuesday from Lahore to Islamabad, a party spokesman said.
She had announced the "long march," a distance of about 275 kilometres (170 miles) to press Musharraf to quit as army chief by November 15, end emergency rule and allow elections under an original timetable of mid-January.
"The long march is on," party spokesman Farhatullah Babar told AFP.
So far her party has largely stayed off the streets, but during Friday her supporters clashed with police who fired tear gas in Rawalpindi, Peshawar and the northwestern town of Swabi.
A senior PPP official, Raza Rabbani, urged the government to release more than 5,000 party workers he said had been picked up in the crackdown.
Another senior aide said the party would rally and put up black flags as a sign of protest against Benazir Bhutto's detention and the police tactics.
In Washington, US State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Musharraf needed to set firm dates for the path ahead.
"He should make that commitment publicly and fix a date for the Pakistani people, so that they have an expectation that they are now going to return to constitutional rule and the pathway to democracy," McCormack said.
Still, White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe again strongly suggested that there would be no cuts in aid to Pakistan -- much of it to the military -- in spite of the crackdown.
The United States sees Musharraf's Pakistan as a cornerstone of its "war on terror," notably against Taliban and al-Qaeda militants.
Meanwhile Canada called on the Commonwealth group of mostly British former colonies to push Pakistan for a timetable on returning to democratic rule.
The 53-nation group will discuss the crisis at a meeting Monday in London, and could decide to suspend Islamabad as it did for five years when Musharraf first seized power in 1999.