How is the war going?

So now that Al Jazera has been broadcasting the actual footage of Benazir Bhutto's assaination, and the Pakistani government has already placed blame towards al-Qaeda, does'nt it seem strange when certain activites of death bombings happen, that government and this government is very quick to blame al-Qaeda?








www.nytimes.com/2007/12/31...kistan.html orld


Elections Face Possible Delay as Pakistani Tensions Grow
New York Times - 2 hours ago
Ed Wray/AP “He is a one-man calamity and the source of all the problems,” Nawaz Sharif said of President Pervez Musharraf at a news conference on Monday in Lahore.




By JANE PERLEZ
Published: December 31, 2007

LAHORE, Pakistan — The most experienced opposition politician in Pakistan, Nawaz Sharif, upped the ante in the coming confrontation with the ruling party on Monday, calling for President Pervez Musharraf’s immediate resignation and the formation of a government of national consensus.
The attack, the most stinging public rebuke of the president from Mr. Sharif since his return from exile, was delivered amid strong indications that the government would postpone elections scheduled for Jan. 8, because of the chaos after the assassination of Mr. Musharraf’s other rival, Benazir Bhutto.

While the government will not decide officially until Tuesday, officials with the Pakistani election commission said the voting would probably be delayed until the end of January or early February, despite Washington’s entreaties to hold it as scheduled.

Mr. Sharif, a former prime minister, said that his party would participate if the parliamentary elections went ahead next week, despite his recent threats to stage a boycott. Both Mr. Sharif’s party and Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan Peoples Party, now led by her son and husband, believe they can capitalize at the polls on the deep well of sympathy over the killing and anger against the government and its security forces for not doing more to prevent it.

In Washington, the Pakistani ambassador said the Musharraf government would accept international assistance for an inquiry into the disputed circumstances surrounding Ms. Bhutto’s death, but not an independent investigation by outside experts.

Many opposition figures and Pakistani political commentators have said that damage to election offices in Sindh Province caused by the violence that erupted after Ms. Bhutto’s death, the burning of electoral rolls and what they saw as the government’s plans to rig the results virtually guaranteed that the election would be deeply flawed if it were held on Jan. 8.

Mr. Sharif suggested that his party would participate only because it had little choice but to follow the decision of Ms. Bhutto’s party on Sunday to run in the elections.

A State Department spokesman, Tom Casey, said Monday that while the Bush administration continued to support holding elections on Jan. 8, it would defer to the judgment of Pakistani political leaders on the wisdom of a delay.

“The key here is that there be a date certain for elections in Pakistan,” Mr. Casey said. “We would certainly, I think, have concerns about some sort of indefinite postponement of the elections, because I don’t think that serves the interests of anyone, certainly not the Pakistani people.”

In a news conference here in the headquarters of his faction of the Pakistan Muslim League, Mr. Sharif did not mince words in his assessment of President Musharraf. “He is a one-man calamity and the source of all the problems,” he said. “The country is burning.”

The strong words that Mr. Sharif unleashed against Mr. Musharraf in Monday’s briefing reflected the poisonous history between the men.

Like Ms. Bhutto, Mr. Sharif was twice prime minister. He was deposed during his second term in October 1999 when Mr. Musharraf was head of the Pakistani Army and staged a coup against him.

Hours before the coup, Mr. Sharif had hoped to oust General Musharraf — whom Mr. Sharif had personally elevated to the top army post — by preventing his plane from landing after a trip abroad.

But that gambit failed, and once Mr. Musharraf became president, he charged Mr. Sharif with attempted murder and corruption, then banished him to a 10-year exile in Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Sharif returned to Pakistan last month, and since then has taken a tougher stand against Mr. Musharraf than did Ms. Bhutto, including a demand that the president restore the judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts who were fired during the recent six-week emergency rule.

Expanding on Nawaz Sharif’s comments at the news conference here, his brother, Shahbaz, also an experienced politician, said he was confident that the mood against the Musharraf government had turned so sour that the two main opposition parties would win the election, even if it was delayed a bit.

Shahbaz Sharif was chief minister of Punjab Province, one of the most powerful jobs in Pakistan, during his brother’s second term.

“The Pakistan Peoples Party will win seats, and we will defeat the Q League hands down,” he said, referring to the faction of the Pakistan Muslim League made up of Mr. Musharraf’s followers. “Even if they try to rig, we will win. The atmosphere has changed against them. The courage to rig has diminished.”
He accused the current chief minister of Punjab, Chaudhry Pervez Elahi, of planning to distribute forged ballot papers and to create “ghost” polling places in order to swing the election in favor of Mr. Musharraf’s party. “Ghost” polling places are extra polling places that are often created in Pakistani elections to enhance the vote totals of one side or another.

The best solution to the current charged political atmosphere, Shahbaz Sharif said, would be for Mr. Musharraf to allow a government of “national consensus” to be formed in consultation with the opposition parties. This government’s chief task would be to prepare for elections 45 days to three months after taking office.

The new government could form a neutral and powerful election commission to replace the current politically biased one, a move that was more likely to ensure free and fair elections, he said. “The Election Commission is a pawn; it has no legitimacy,” he said.

Such a government would also be in a better position to investigate the still uncertain circumstances surrounding the assassination of Ms. Bhutto, because it would be perceived as being more neutral, he said.

The idea of a consensus government that would hold office until new elections has gained currency in Pakistan’s news media since Ms. Bhutto’s death. If steps were not taken to form a consensus government, Shahbaz Sharif said, he believed the public anger could spin out of control.

The fury in the province of Sindh, the home base of the Bhutto family, was so intense that the possibility was raised that it might split off as a separate entity. There were strong undercurrents for separation from the federation of Pakistan in the province of Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province as well, Shahbaz Sharif said. But elsewhere in the country, there were only scattered reports of violence on Monday, primarily in Hyderabad and nearby Nawabshah, the hometown of Ms. Bhutto’s husband.

“The international community must see that Pakistan can sink into deep turmoil,” he said. In order to stave off the potential chaos, he said, Mr. Musharraf had to be pressed to take the right steps, just as he was persuaded to step down as army chief and to end the six-week emergency rule imposed last month.

He added, “If Benazir Bhutto’s killing is not investigated fairly and elections are not free and fair, and if a neutral caretaker government is not put in place, it can lead us to a crisis beyond anyone’s reach.”

no idea - as soon as they let me