Benazir: Sliding back to dictatorship

Dubai: Former prime minister Benazir Bhutto rushed back to Karachi from Dubai last night after learning that an emergency had been declared in Pakistan.

"People want leadership. Instead of moving to democracy we are going backwards towards greater dictatorship. I plan to meet with other leaders and discuss with them a course of action to reverse the suspension of the constitution," Bhutto told Sky News after landing in Karachi.

Bhutto left Dubai by Emirates flight EK-602, which was delayed for two hours because she was holding talks with the government and party officials prior to departure, Gulf News learnt.

Bhutto described the imposition of emergency rule by
President Musharraf as "mini-martial law" andvowed that her party will protest against it.

"We condemn this martial law. We will protest it," Bhutto
said in a news conference in the southern city of Karachi a
little over an hour after arriving back from Dubai, where she
had been visiting her family.

Bhutto had been negotiating with Musharraf over Pakistan's
transition to civilian led-democracy and had been allowed to
return from self-imposed exile last month without fear of
prosecution in old corruption cases thanks to an amnesty granted by the president.

Anarchy

Exiled former President Nawaz Sharif said Pakistan was heading towards anarchy and described President Pervez Musharraf's decision to invoke emergency powers as a form of martial law.

"We are heading towards a chaotic situation, heading towards anarchy," Sharif told Indian news channel CNN-IBN in an interview replayed by Dawn Television in Pakistan.

Lawyers arrested

Pakistani police arrested several lawyers opposed to President Pervez Musharraf on Saturday, a former judge said.

"We have confirmed reports of several lawyers' arrests in Quetta and Karachi and we have asked many others to go underground because police are conducting raids," Tariq Mehmud, a former judge who stood up to Musharraf when he took power in a bloodless coup in 1999, told reporters.

Mehmud was part of the legal team led by Supreme Court Bar Association president Aitzaz Ahsan, who was detained earlier in Islamabad, that opposed Musharraf's bid for re-election last month while he was still army chief.

"We have called an emergency meeting tomorrow to chalk out a plan, although we are going to boycott courts all over Pakistan on Monday," Mehmud said.

- With input from agencies