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Three of Bhutto's supporters gunned down

Three supporters of Pakistan opposition leader Benazir Bhutto were killed yesterday when gunmen attacked her party's office in a town in southwestern Pakistan, police said, in the first reported deaths in the current election campaign.

Officers were investigating the early morning incident, which occurred in Naseerabad, about 250km east of Quetta, the capital of Baluchistan Province, said Wajid Akbar, the district police chief. Police had no immediate information about the motive for the attack or who was behind it, he said.

Although killings and other violence were common in past elections, the bloodshed in Naseerabad was the first such incident in the campaign for parliamentary elections scheduled for Jan. 8.

Pakistan has been engulfed in a political crisis since Nov. 3, when President Pervez Musharraf imposed emergency rule and fired Supreme Court justices who were preparing to rule on the validity of his October reelection.

He then replaced the fired judges with his loyalists, who promptly dismissed all complaints against the former general's election.

Attorney General Malik Mohammad Qayyum said yesterday that Musharraf would lift emergency rule and restore the suspended Constitution on Dec. 15, a day earlier than planned.

It was not immediately clear why Musharraf had decided to end the emergency a day early, though some opponents had been toying with the idea of demanding he bring forward the date to avoid a boycott of the general election next year.

"It will be on the 15th," Qayyum said by telephone, adding he did not know why. "Everybody says the emergency must be lifted, so earlier the better."

"Maybe it's because Dec. 16 is a Sunday," he said.

Musharraf's spokesman said he did not know if the date had been brought forward.

Meanwhile, Bhutto and another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif -- whose government was ousted by Musharraf in a coup in 1999 -- have been trying to reach an agreement on a set of demands that would allow their two parties to participate in the ballot. Both have accused Musharraf, who retired from the army last month before being sworn in as a civilian president, of planning to rig the elections.

Sharif, who leads the conservative Pakistan Muslim League-N party, has been pushing for a boycott of the vote, a move that would undermine Musharraf's US-backed efforts to transform his military dictatorship into a democratic, civilian administration.

He has insisted that the Supreme Court judges fired by Musharraf be reinstated before the vote.

But Bhutto, a two-time prime minister who also recently returned to her homeland after nearly eight years in exile, has indicated she would prefer to reinstate them after the elections.
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