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| Sunday, 13 October 2002 |
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Anti-US Islamists to hold balance of power in hung parliament ISLAMABAD - Pakistan's parties on Saturday reviewed their positions in the future government with the balance of power in a hung parliament held by radical Islamists who made stunning gains in Thursday's elections. With 266 of 272 seats announced by 10:30 am (0530 GMT), the six-party Muttahidda Majlis-e-Amal (MMA) Islamic alliance had secured 44 seats, or slightly more than 16 percent of the national assembly. Three seats remained to be declared in Pakistan's first general elections since military ruler President Pervez Musharraf seized power in a coup in 1999, while the election commission announced repolling in three districts because of irregularities. Final results were due later Saturday. The massive swing to the Islamists, who picked up only four seats when they contested the 1997 vote separately, followed a passionate campaign by firebrand clerics throughout western border areas where anger at the US-led war in Afghanistan runs high. The 18-month-old pro-government party Pakistan Muslim League-Quaid (PML-Q) led the other parties on 77 seats, followed by banned ex-premier Benazir Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) with 63 seats. The other main opposition party, the once mighty Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif crashed to just 14 seats. Independents had clinched 29 seats so far. One of them went to the jailed leader of an outlawed Islamic militant group, Maulana Azam Tariq. PML-N and PPP, whose leaders were both excluded, cried foul and said the results had been rigged. Bhutto called for a fresh election and said the vote count was fraudulent. "I'm charging fraud. It's a totally fraudulent, manipulated result," Bhutto told AFP by telephone on Friday from London, one of two cities where she has lived in exile since 1998. She said the MMA sweep in North West Frontier Province had been engineered by the military to guarantee support from the United States. "The military want to hold a red rag up to the West and say 'Look West, you need a military dictatorship, because if there's not, then pro-Taliban parties are going to come to power'," she said. "But the MMA is a frightening scenario because when you create genies, genies get out of hand. "What we have seen in the MMA is a genie of frightening proportions." Indian Foreign Minister Yashwant Sinha expressed concern at the strong showing of the Islamic radicals in Pakistan's elections, a report published in New Delhi said Saturday. "Despite his best efforts, Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, had not been able to control the fundamentalist forces in his country's policy," the Hindu newspaper quoted Sinha, who is in London, as saying. An MMA leader in the southern port city of Karachi vowed to end the hunt for fugitives from the extremist al-Qaeda network. 422 have been nabbed on Pakistani soil and handed to the United States since late last year. "Taliban and al-Qaeda members are our brothers, unless there is evidence against them," Munawar Hasan told a news conference in Karachi Friday. "Whether it is Osama bin Laden or Mullah Omar, we will not hand over anybody to the US without any proof," he said, referring respectively to the chief suspect behind the September 11 attacks and the former spiritual leader of the Taliban government. The United States meanwhile said Friday that the elections had been relatively free and orderly, basing its impression on reports from international observers from the US embassy, the European Union and other agencies. The European Union was to give its own press briefing later Saturday and release the results from its observer team. |
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