Musharraf rivals talk of working together

Bhutto said she saw no prospect of achieving political power by cooperating with Musharraf’s administration.

“Now we’ve come to the conclusion that even if we get power, it will just be a show of power. It won’t be substantive power,” Bhutto said.

“It seems unlikely that the People’s Party will participate in the upcoming elections,” she said, describing the vote as a “stage-managed show” to return the ruling party to power.

Other Bhutto supporters went ahead with the procession without her.

Shah Mahmood Qureshi, president of Bhutto’s party for Punjab, said he was leading a column of 200 vehicles from Lahore, but they had been stopped by police about 55 miles from the city and hundreds of people were detained. There was no immediate confirmation from officials of the arrests.

Police initially said they ramped up security around Bhutto because of intelligence that a suicide bomber was planning to attack her in Lahore.

Bhutto was targeted by an Oct. 18 suicide attack on a homecoming procession in the southern city of Karachi as she returned from years in exile. She was unscathed, but the blast killed 145 others.

She was put under house arrest in Islamabad on Friday to prevent her from addressing a rally in the nearby city of Rawalpindi, where authorities issued similar warnings.

With Musharraf losing popularity because of growing disaffection with military rule, U.S. officials encouraged him to reconcile with Bhutto in hope of keeping a U.S.-friendly administration in control of the nuclear-armed nation where militants are orchestrating attacks inside the country and across the border in Afghanistan.

Extinguishing that prospect would put extra strain on Musharraf’s relations with Washington, which is also pressing him to quit his army post.

Musharraf, a key U.S. ally in fighting al-Qaida and Taliban, has set no time limit for the emergency, which has also resulted in a ban on rallies and the blacking out of independent TV networks.

He signaled Sunday that he wanted to hold the elections with the restrictions in place, raising major doubts about the vote’s credibility.

The emergency came shortly before the Supreme Court was due to rule on the legality of Musharraf’s recent re-election for a new presidential term, and critics say it was a tactic to oust independent-minded judges and prolong his eight-year rule.

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