Bhutto: Deal with Musharraf good for Pak

Coming close to admitting to a deal with President Pervez Musharraf, former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto has said such an agreement could hurt her credibility, but was essential for the restoration of democracy in her country.

Coming close to admitting to a deal with President Pervez Musharraf, former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto has said such an agreement could hurt her credibility, but was essential for the restoration of democracy in her country.

In an interaction with students at the London School of Economics on Wednesday, Bhutto said her political credibility would suffer if she entered into an agreement with Musharraf at this stage, but added that such a deal “would be good for the country’s democratic, constitutional and development interests as well as to prevent the country from falling into extremist hands”, newspapers reported on Thursday.

This was perhaps the closest she came to admitting that she was entering into a deal with Musharraf. One of her top Pakistan People’s Party (PPP) leaders Amin Fahim who was involved in the negotiations with Musarraf’s confidantes had said Bhutto would not endorse Musharraf as Chief of Army and would resist his re-election in uniform.

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However, it is yet to be decided whether she could support Musharraf as a civillian president. In her interaction with students, Bhutto also accepted for the first time that she as prime minister in 1990s committed a blunder by supporting Taliban.

She said at that time she had thought the Taliban to be a peaceful and stabilising alternative to warring Mujahideen factions.

Responding to a question, Bhutto said it was her government’s mistake to support the Taliban movement within Afghanistan.

She said she had supported the Taliban in the hope that they would restore peace in their war-ravaged country to pave way for the repatriation of four million Afghan refugees living in Pakistan.