Islamabad: Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf has met former prime minister Benazir Bhutto in Abu Dhabi, in what appears negotiations to ensure the general’s re-election and the politician’s return home.
Musharraf on Friday visited Abu Dhabi for a meeting with the Pakistan Peoples Party chief. Bhutto cancelled a meeting of her party’s parliamentary wing in London.
Former director general of Pakistan Federal Investigation Agency Rehman Mallik accompanied Bhutto. Musharraf's delegation included top ISI officials. According to officials, this was their second meeting and the two were in regular touch over telephone.
The meeting comes after Bhutto's recent remarks that her party would lose votes in the polls due to be held later this year if she aligned with Musharraf in the aftermath of the recent supreme court judgment reinstating suspended Chief Justice Iftikar M Chaudhry.
The meeting also took place against the backdrop of attempts by militant students to re-occupy the Lal Masjid which was captured in a military raid. Its capture resulted in a spate of suicide bomb attacks mostly in tribal areas
targeting Pakistani troops.
US ally Musharraf is going through the weakest period of his eight-year rule, and a Supreme Court decision last week to reinstate a chief justice he had spent four months trying to sack raised questions about his ability to secure a second five-year term with elections due by the turn of the year.
The National Assembly is scheduled to be dissolved in November, and elections should be held in December or January.
Musharraf had wanted to secure his own re-election from the outgoing assembly, but the Supreme Court decision last week made it more likely constitutional challenges to his plan would succeed. An alliance with two-time premier Bhutto could be his last chance, analysts say, unless he goes back on his word not to declare a state of emergency.
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