Pakistan's government is close to an agreement in power-sharing talks with former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, a minister said yesterday.
The statement by Sheikh Rashid Ahmad, the minister for railways who is close to Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf, came as Bhutto said that the government was about to issue an amnesty which would quash corruption cases against her and others.
"Things are going in the right direction, as I have been saying for the past several days," Ahmed said. "Wait for five or six hours, and everything will be clear by that time."
The amnesty has been a key demand of Bhutto, who went into exile eight years after she left to avoid arrest on corruption cases registered by another exiled former leader, Nawaz Sharif.
"We're expecting an ordinance today," Bhutto said in London yesterday, using diplomatic language for a decree from Musharraf which would include an amnesty on corruption charges against her.
Bhutto made no other comments as she arrived for a resumed meeting of her opposition Pakistan People's Party (PPP) in London, but her spokesman Wajid Hasan confirmed that she was referring to an amnesty.
"It's definitely an amnesty," he said, adding that Musharraf's office was expected to send a draft of the reconciliation ordinance by e-mail.
"They will send it to us today," he said.
He said that the PPP had raised a number of points in communications with Musharraf's people.
"If they're not incorporated we'll say no; if they are, we'll say yes," he said.
The comments came as Musharraf's government said it was optimistic about a breakthrough in talks with Bhutto despite her threat to deal his re-election bid a "severe blow."
Bhutto's party met in London Wednesday and met again yesterday to consider mass resignations by lawmakers in a bid to rob the vote by federal and provincial lawmakers of any semblance of credibility.
Musharraf, a key US ally who seized power in the nuclear-armed nation in 1999, is expected to win tomorrow's presidential vote although he still faces Supreme Court legal challenges against its legitimacy.
The general has been in talks with Bhutto for a US-backed deal that would bring two Western-friendly leaders together in a country wracked by violence linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda network.
Islamic rebels holding more than 200 Pakistani soldiers in a troubled tribal belt bordering Afghanistan killed three of their hostages yesterday, while 26 people died in violence in the frontier region the previous day.
But Bhutto, who served as prime minister from 1988 to 1990 and again from 1993 to 1996, opposes the general's objective to win re-election while also serving as army chief, saying that his failure to restore full democracy has fueled militancy.
Musharraf has promised to quit the army by Nov. 15 if he is re-elected as expected and to hand over the reins of the military to former spy chief Lieutenant General Ashfaq Kiyani.
Kiyani led Musharraf's side in the earlier negotiations with Bhutto.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court yesterday resumed hearing petitions filed by Musharraf's rivals in the election, former judge Wajihuddin Ahmad and Makhdoom Amin Fahim, the vice president of Bhutto's party.
They have called for the election to be postponed on the grounds that Musharraf is not eligible to stand and that the poll should be carried out by new parliaments that will come in after general elections scheduled early next year.
"The government is preparing for a counter-strategy if there is an adverse reaction from the court," the government official said.
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