ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Nov. 8 — Gen. Pervez Musharraf told his national security council today that parliamentary elections would be held before Feb. 15 and that he would give up his military uniform before taking the oath of office for his new term as president of Pakistan.
As he made the statement, his security forces clamped down hard on the main opposition party of Benazir Bhutto, arresting as many as 500 party members last night and today, party workers and diplomats said. The arrests appeared to be an attempt to thwart a protest rally planned by Ms. Bhutto for Friday, the party workers and diplomats said.
General Musharraf, the president, did not set a specific date for parliamentary elections, and it was unclear whether the new timetable would satisfy opposition parties and Western governments, which have been demanding bluntly that he end emergency rule, step down from his post as head of the army and allow elections to go ahead as planned. The elections had been scheduled for Jan. 15.
Ms. Bhutto described the general’s comments as “vague.” But the White House press secretary, Dana M. Perino, welcomed them, saying it was important for the Pakistani people to hear the “clarification” about the election date.
General Musharraf imposed emergency rule last Saturday as indications emerged that the country’s Supreme Court might rule that he was ineligible to hold both the posts of president and head of the military, following his re-election as president in October. President Bush telephoned General Musharraf on Wednesday and urged him to relinquish his military position.
In his comments today to his national security council, which were shown on official government television, General Musharraf made no mention of when he would end the current emergency rule.
He made clear that he was counting on a newly formed Supreme Court, filled with appointees loyal to him, to confirm his re-election as president. That election had been under challenge in the Supreme Court, until the court was dismissed last Saturday under the emergency decree.
The judges, who had indicated they might rule against him, remain under house arrest.
In the arrests within the last two days, members of the Pakistan Peoples Party were rounded up across the central Punjab Province ahead of the major rally Ms. Bhutto has called for Friday, party workers and diplomats said. The rally would focus on the Punjab city of Rawalpindi, the garrison city adjacent to Islamabad, the capital. The arrests were aimed at district leaders who were responsible for organizing people to attend the rally, the party workers said.
“There were a lot of arrests all over Punjab, including of women,” said Qasim Zia, a party leader in Lahore. “Police broke down doors to get into the houses.”
Among those arrested, he said, was Asghar Qaser, a woman who is a Peoples Party member of the National Assembly.
The planned protest, to be held in Liaquat Park in the center of Rawalpindi, has become a major test between Ms. Bhutto and the government. By midday today security officials had locked the gates to the park and were preparing to block the entry roads. Around the city, party workers were in hiding, fearful of arrest by the police in advance of the rally.
Ms. Bhutto, who was the target of a suicide bomb attack during a procession in Karachi on Oct. 18, said she was determined to push ahead with Friday’s protest even though she realized the personal danger to her.
A steady increase in the number of suicide attacks against the military and the police in the last several months, as well as the Karachi attack against Ms. Bhutto, which killed 140 of her party workers, has allowed the government to argue that it cannot guarantee Ms. Bhutto’s personal security Friday.
The government also insists that the rally is forbidden under the emergency rule proclaimed by General Musharraf.
“The rules and regulations apply to everyone,” said Tariq Azim Khan, the minister of state for information. “We have communicated with the Pakistan Peoples Party and advised them against holding a rally tomorrow.”
Mr. Khan added: “We are sure Benazir Bhutto is a sensible politician and won’t want to create a law and order situation. I’m hopeful tomorrow’s rally will be called off.”
Ms. Bhutto came to Islamabad from Karachi Tuesday evening, her first appearance in the capital since her self-imposed exile during which she lived abroad for eight years to escape corruption charges.
She proclaimed on Wednesday that she was confident that so many opponents of the regime would come out on the streets that “the regime will find it difficult to put them in jails.”
But since the emergency rule, demonstrations by political party members have been virtually nonexistent. On Wednesday night Ms. Bhutto’s party mustered about 100 people to walk from the party’s headquarters in Islamabad to a barricade near the Parliament building. When the workers tried to push aside the barriers, police officers attacked them with tear gas and batons.
While political parties have largely remained off the street, Pakistan’s lawyers have led the resistance to the emergency law under which General Musharraf dissolved the Constitution, fired the Supreme Court and delayed parliamentary elections, which had been in expected in January.
Several hundred people, including lawyers, students and women, demonstrated at the High Court in Islamabad today. As the police rushed in to make arrests, many of the demonstrators barricaded themselves inside the rooms of the bar association.
The main target of General Musharraf’s emergency rule has been the Supreme Court.
Most of the Supreme Court judges, including the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, are under house arrest.
Judges from the High Courts across the country are also under house arrest or in jail, and an unknown number of lawyers -- 1,000 or more, according to some estimates -- have been arrested.
In a sign of the determined mood of the government, a judge in Lahore, Irfan Qadir, who granted bail to 54 human rights advocates arrested Sunday, was removed from the bench and relegated to a desk job as a way of punishment, lawyers said.
The leader of the lawyers’ movement, Aitzaz Ahsan, a Cambridge University attorney, was allowed his first visitor Wednesday at the Adiali jail in Rawalpindi, where he has been held since Saturday night.
His sister-in-law, Nighat Asad, said she took Mr. Ahsan a blanket, a pillow and some medicine. Another lawyer, Munir Malik, a former president of the Supreme Court bar association, who was ill, had been moved from the Rawalpindi jail to a more distant, and tougher jail in Attock, near the North West Frontier Province, Ms. Asad said.
Most of the dozen independent news television channels that were banned under the emergency rule remain off the air. But television channels that agree to a government code of conduct will be permitted to operate again, television executives said. Three channels have agreed so far to the code, television executives said — a local CNBC affiliate, a second business channel and a local Punjabi language channel — and within hours, they were back on the air. Under the measure, journalists whose reports bring “ridicule or disrepute” on General Musharraf and other officials could face up to three years in prison. As the government security forces kept up the pressure on the streets, General Musharraf’s aides showed little sign of relenting on the political front. The president appeared to have a plan in mind for the future that would preserve his position as president without any interference from an independent judiciary, Western diplomats said.
His first priority, the diplomats said, was to get his October re-election validated by a newly appointed Supreme Court, filled with loyal justices. The parliamentary elections would then follow.
Last Sunday, the prime minister, Shaukat Aziz, said elections could be delayed for a year. This morning, before General Musharraf’s announcement, one senior minister said elections would take place in six months, a date that was “totally unacceptable” to the Western governments, a diplomat said.
