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U.S. urges Pakistan move ahead with free election
2007-12-31
The Bush administration on Sunday urged Pakistan to move ahead with free elections but declined to push Islamabad to hold the scheduled January 8 ballot after opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed last week. "We believe it is important for Pakistan to confront extremists and continue on the path to democracy by holding free and fair elections," White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in a statement. "The timing of those elections will be up to the Pakistanis," Stanzel said in Texas where U.S. President George W. Bush was spending a weeklong holiday at his ranch. Bhutto's death has thrown the election in doubt and a senior official in Pakistan, a key ally in Bush's war on terrorism, said it could be delayed for up to eight weeks. The United States and other Western allies have urged Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf to hold elections, hoping that will bring stability to the nuclear-armed country that is emerging from eight years of military rule while facing mounting violence from Islamist militants allied to al Qaeda. The U.S. State Department went somewhat further than the White House, saying if the election was delayed Pakistan should also announce a new date for the polls. "If there is a delay in the elections, we want to make sure a new date is named. We don't want to see an indefinite delay," said a State Department spokesman, declining to be further identified. But the State Department spokesman said that the naming of Bhutto's 19-year-old son and her husband as the leaders of her party, the Pakistan People's Party, would help Pakistan move ahead with the polls. Bhutto died while campaigning on Thursday in a suicide attack that has stoked violence in the country. (Reporting by Jeremy Pelofsky in Crawford, Texas and Charles Abbott in Washington; editing by Vicki Allen)
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