Musharraf beset by political rivals

By Stephen Graham

ISLAMABAD, Saturday (AP) - The party of exiled former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has ruled out reconciliation with Pakistan's embattled military leader, a day after a court said he can return home ahead of crucial elections. On another front threatening President Gen. Pervez Musharraf's future, the army said 60 soldiers and 250 militants had died in a month of bloody fighting near the Afghan border.

Meanwhile, Benazir Bhutto, another banished ex-leader itching for a comeback, suggested on Friday that talks on a power-sharing deal for Musharraf to stay on as a civilian president had stalled. ''We haven't reached an agreement yet, so I'm not in a position to tell you where the negotiations are heading,'' Bhutto told Dawn News television.

Jubilant Nawaz Sharif suppporters

Pakistan, once firmly under the U.S.-allied general's control, is in the grip of political uncertainty less than two months before Musharraf plans to ask lawmakers for a new five-year term. Pakistan's third period of direct military rule in its 60-year history began when Musharraf ousted Sharif in 1999 for trying to fire him as army chief and sent him into exile in Saudi Arabia.

But Pakistan's emboldened Supreme Court, which recently quashed the general's attempt to fire its chief justice and is expected to consider whether he can legally extend his rule, ruled Thursday that Sharif was free to return. But officials are suggesting Sharif could be jailed again on his return and his party maintained its belligerent tone.

''There is no chance for any reconciliation'' with Musharraf, Sadique al-Farooq, a senior leader of Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League-N party, told The Associated Press on Friday. ''It is out of question ... democracy and dictatorship cannot go together,'' he said.

Both the PML-N and Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party expect to make gains in parliamentary and provincial elections due by January.

Before that, Musharraf plans to secure a fresh presidential term from lawmakers in the outgoing assemblies, where his increasingly shaky coalition holds a majority. Bhutto, who fled in 1999 from corruption charges, has held out the possibility that Musharraf could seek re-endorsement from the new Parliament — and that her party would back him if he gives up his army post and waters down the presidency's sweeping powers.