Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf vowed yesterday to hold general elections by Jan. 9 and indicated the state of emergency he imposed a week ago could stay in place until then.
He said the elections commission would fix an exact date for the vote and that parliament would be dissolved on Thursday, with the country to be run by a caretaker government.
The military ruler, who seized power in a 1999 coup, defended emergency rule as safeguarding the national interest and said it had been the hardest decision of his life.
"We should have elections before the 9th of January," he told reporters in Islamabad at his first news conference since imposing the state of emergency. "I leave it to the election commission to decide on the exact date."
The new timetable effectively brings the elections process back to what it was before emergency rule and meets a key demand of his critics at home and abroad.
Musharraf, a key US ally, has been under fierce international pressure since he suspended the Constitution, sacked the country's chief justice and imposed tight media curbs.
He said the declaration of emergency rule was needed to cope with growing Islamic militancy and a meddlesome judiciary, singling out ousted chief justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry for particular criticism.
"I did not violate the Constitution and the law of this land," Musharraf said. "It was the most difficult decision of my life. I found myself between a rock and a hard surface. I stand by it because I think it was in the national interest."
Musharraf gave his broadest hint yet that the state of emergency could last at least until the polls, saying it was needed "to ensure absolutely fair and transparent elections."
"I understand that this emergency has to be lifted, but I cannot give a date," he said.
The military ruler reiterated his promise to quit as head of the army, taking the oath of presidential office for a second term as a civilian, as soon as the Supreme Court validates his Oct. 6 victory.
Meanwhile, former prime minister Benazir Bhutto flew to the eastern city of Lahore, where she plans to hold the biggest protest yet against emergency rule.
After cementing her profile as the only opposition figure able to muster a serious threat to the president, she aims to start a "long march" from Lahore to Islamabad.
She has given Musharraf until Thursday to quit the army, end the emergency and set a date for parliamentary elections by the middle of January -- demands he seemed to have accepted, at least in part, with his announcement yesterday.
Bhutto's planned march, a distance of about 275km, is due to start tomorrow and, if allowed to go ahead, would draw huge crowds.
She was placed under house arrest on Friday to prevent her leading a rally in Rawalpindi, with authorities citing fears of a repeat of the suicide bombing that hit her Karachi homecoming parade last month, killing 139 people.
Analysts say she has been impressive so far, addressing crowds from behind coils of barbed wire outside her home, turning up by surprise at a city center rally and again at the sacked chief justice's house and appealing to foreign diplomats for support.
Musharraf had overnight won his strongest support from US President George W. Bush since declaring the emergency.
Bush, who sees Musharraf's Pakistan as a lynchpin in the "war on terror," hailed the military ruler as a strong ally and said he had no reason to doubt his pledges.
"I think that's what you have to do," Bush said. "When somebody says this is what they're going to do, then you give them a chance to do it."
He said Washington would continue to cooperate with Islamabad because the US needed help in the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
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