Police blocked opposition leader Benazir Bhutto from visiting Pakistan’s deposed chief justice on Saturday, as President Pervez Musharraf resisted US calls to end Emergency rule.Bhutto, who herself was kept under house arrest for most of Friday, tried to approach former chief justice Iftikhar Chaudhry’s home, where he is being detained, but police parked two trucks on the road to block her path.After imposing Emergency rule and suspending the Constitution a week ago citing a hostile judiciary and rising militancy, General Musharraf sacked most of the Supreme Court’s judges and has since replaced them with more amenable ones.“He is the chief justice, he is the real chief justice,” Bhutto blared over a megaphone, demanding they all be reinstated.Bhutto will defy Musharraf and go ahead with a pro-democracy motorcade from Lahore to Islamabad next week, after police scotched a protest by her Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) in Rawalpindi on Friday.On Friday, police used batons and teargas to break up small protests in several parts of the country, but demonstrations have been relatively small by Pakistani standards.Bhutto, the Pakistani politician most able to mobilise masses, was due to meet foreign diplomats later in the day.She briefly joined journalists protesting outside the offices of a television channel against a blackout on private news broadcasts. BBC and CNN are also off the air, though newspapers are still publishing freely.Bhutto is due to head to Lahore on Sunday, and has said Musharraf can defuse the protest if he restores the Constitution, removes his army uniform and calls elections by mid-January.Musharraf has said elections will be held by February 15, about a month later than they were due. He also said he would quit as army chief and be sworn in as a civilian president once new judges appointed to the Supreme Court struck down challenges against his re-election.The United States kept up pressure on Musharraf calling for an end to Emergency rule. “Free and fair elections require a lifting of the state of Emergency,” said Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.The United States also called for the release of political party members and peaceful protesters, he said.An Interior Ministry spokesman said 2,500 people had been detained since the Emergency was declared, though Bhutto’s PPP says 5,000 of their activists have been picked up over the past few days.
