World | Pakistan
100,000 attend Zardari campaign rally
Benazir Bhutto's widowed husband urged Pakistanis to help him "save" the country in a charged speech on Saturday to about 100,000 supporters at the first major campaign rally held by the opposition leader's party since her assassination.
- AP
- Published: 00:45 February 10, 2008
- Asif Ali Zardari, husband of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, shouts "long live Bhutto" slogans during an election campaign rally in Thatta.
- Image Credit: AP
Thatta: Benazir Bhutto's widowed husband urged Pakistanis to help him "save" the country in a charged speech on Saturday to about 100,000 supporters at the first major campaign rally held by the opposition leader's party since her assassination.
Elsewhere a bomb killed at least 20 people at an election rally in the volatile northwest, while riot police in the capital, Islamabad, used water cannons and tear gas against hundreds of lawyers protesting the detention of the country's deposed chief justice.
The violence underscored the high tensions in Pakistan as it heads toward February 18 elections that are meant to restore democracy after years of military rule.
The campaign has been overshadowed by Bhutto's killing in a suicide attack six weeks ago.
Striving to fill the void left by former Prime Minister Bhutto, her husband Asif Ali Zardari urged followers of her Pakistan Peoples Party to push for victory in the vote and to realise Bhutto's vision of providing jobs and ending poverty.
Responsibility
"I have the responsibility to save Pakistan," Zardari told the crowd at what was by far the biggest rally in the election campaign so far.
"This is our country and we have to save it." Describing Bhutto as the mother of all Pakistanis, Zardari claimed she had been murdered by an establishment that she wanted to change.
"That is why they were against us," Zardari said. "If they try to stop me, I will destroy them and I hope you people will support me." The government has rejected allegations that intelligence agents or radicals in the ruling party, allied with President Pervez Musharraf, had plotted to kill her.
The government has said the attack was orchestrated by a top Taliban commander with links to Al Qaida.
Police officer Bashir Baloch estimated 100,000 people packed the rally at a stadium in the historic southern town of Thatta. Many thousands more spilled onto the streets outside the full stadium. About 2,000 officers were deployed to provide security.
In the northwestern town of Charsadda, a suicide bombing ripped through a rally of the Awami National Party - a secular, ethnic Pashtun group - killing at least 20 people and wounding 25, officials said.
Afrasiab Khattak, the party's provincial leader and a prominent human rights champion, was addressing the rally but later told Dawn television he was not hurt.
Interior Minister Hamid Nawaz said the attack showed that militants in the northwest - where Taliban and Al Qaida have sanctuaries near the Afghan border - were targeting all parties, both government and opposition.
"They are against everyone," he said. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Earlier on Saturday, Pakistan's Bar Council announced a nationwide lawyers' boycott of courts until February 18 elections - part of a campaign to pressure the government to restore the chief justice and 60 other top judges who were fired by Musharraf on November 3 ahead of a key Supreme Court ruling on the legality of the US-backed leader's re-election as president.
In the upcoming parliamentary elections, Bhutto's party is widely expected to benefit from the unpopularity of Musharraf and sympathy over the former prime minister's assassination.
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