Pakistan’s Parliament prepared on Monday to elect a new prime minister as the coalition government appeared set for a confrontation with key United States ally President Pervez Musharraf. Yousuf Raza Gilani, the candidate nominated by the party of slain opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, is a virtual certainty to win.
Two suicide attacks killed at least 31 people and injured more than 200 in Lahore on Tuesday as suspected Islamist militants escalated their campaign of mayhem in Pakistan’s largest cities. The bombs were the latest in a string of attacks against military and police targets in Lahore, the previously peaceful capital of Punjab province.
Two bombs exploded in the Pakistani city of Lahore on Tuesday, one outside a government office, killing at least 20 people, police and officials said. Well over 500 people have been killed in Pakistan this year in a campaign of suicide bombings, which intensified after troops stormed a radical mosque in Islamabad in July.
Pakistan’s two major opposition leaders signed a formal declaration Sunday on forming a coalition government, and urged President Pervez Musharraf to convene Parliament without delay. Asif Ali Zardari, widowed husband of ex-premier Benazir Bhutto, and Nawaz Sharif signed the agreement at a news conference after a fresh round of coalition talks.
Pakistani tribesmen on Monday buried the last of the 43 people killed in a suicide bomb attack at a meeting of tribal elders discussing how to tackle al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
At least 30 people were killed and up to 40 injured when a suicide bomber attacked a traditional tribal meeting in north-western Pakistan on Sunday, officials said. Pakistan is in the middle of a wave of violence blamed on al Qaeda-linked militants based in tribal lands on the Afghan border and there have been three suicide attacks in as many days.
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/ 26 February 2008
The United Nations on Monday warned that it no longer has enough money to keep global malnutrition at bay this year in the face of a dramatic upward surge in world commodity prices, which have created a ”new face of hunger”. ”We will have a problem in coming months,” said Josette Sheeran, the head of the UN’s World Food Programme.
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/ 20 February 2008
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf rejected demands to quit on Wednesday and called for a ”harmonious coalition” as victorious opposition parties mulled a grouping that could force the key United States ally from power. Musharraf was making his first official comments since Monday’s crucial parliamentary vote.
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/ 20 February 2008
The party of assassinated former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto began stitching together a coalition on Wednesday that could spell the end for President Pervez Musharraf, after winning the most seats in a general election. The United States welcomed the vote as ”a step toward the full restoration of democracy”.
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/ 19 February 2008
President Pervez Musharraf’s leading lieutenants appeared to have lost their seats in early results in Monday’s Pakistani election, dealing a blow to the retired general’s hopes of clinging to power. Early winners included the Pakistan Muslim League (N) of the former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, who was polling strongly in Punjab.
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/ 18 February 2008
Vote counting got under way on Monday after a lacklustre turnout in Pakistan’s parliamentary elections, which passed off relatively peacefully despite fears of sabotage by Islamic militants. With his future hanging in the balance, President Pervez Musharraf resolved to work with the new civilian government.
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/ 18 February 2008
Fears of violence kept many Pakistanis away from the polls on Monday with 80 000 troops backing up police to watch over a vote that could choose a Parliament set on driving President Pervez Musharraf from office. Results are expected to start emerging by midnight and trends should be clear on Tuesday morning.
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/ 17 February 2008
Leaders of Pakistan’s opposition parties have been making frantic last-minute efforts to convince fearful voters to turn out in crucial parliamentary elections on Monday that may plunge the 164 million-strong nation into chaos. As the last day of official campaigning in the most troubled contest for decades drew to a close on Saturday, no one was confident of a victory.
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/ 16 February 2008
Pakistani politicians were winding up campaigns on Saturday for a general election that is meant to complete a transition to civilian rule but has been overshadowed by fear of violence and accusations of rigging. The elections on Monday are for a new Parliament and provincial assemblies and while President Pervez Musharraf is not taking part, the vote could spell trouble for the important United States ally.
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/ 16 February 2008
A suicide car bomb outside a Pakistani election candidate’s office killed 37 people in the violent north-west on Saturday, the last day of campaigning for an election meant to complete a transition to civilian rule. Separately, police in the south of the country said they had foiled another attack planned for polling day on Monday.
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/ 9 February 2008
To chants of ”Democracy is the best revenge”, tens of thousands of Benazir Bhutto’s followers rallied in southern Pakistan on Saturday as her party relaunched an election campaign derailed by her assassination. About 2Â 000 police and hundreds of private armed security guards from Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party secured the venue.
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/ 8 February 2008
British police have concluded that Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed by the force of a suicide bomb and not by an assassin’s bullet, he New York Times reported in its Friday editions. The findings, if confirmed, would support the Pakistani government’s explanation of Bhutto’s death.
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/ 7 February 2008
Tens of thousands of people beat their chests in anguish at Benazir Bhutto’s tomb on Thursday as they marked the end of 40 days of mourning for the slain opposition leader. The solemn Muslim ceremonies at the family mausoleum in southern Pakistan marked the start of campaigning by her Pakistan People’s Party for elections on February 18.
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/ 29 January 2008
Twelve suspected militants were killed by a missile strike in Pakistan’s troubled tribal belt, hours after gunmen held 300 children hostage at a nearby school, officials said on Tuesday. Separately, a Pakistani soldier was killed and five others injured in the latest clashes between security forces and Islamist insurgents in the lawless borderlands with Afghanistan.
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/ 28 January 2008
Gunmen took hostage up to 250 Pakistani schoolchildren in the north-western town of Bannu on Monday after taking refuge in the school following a clash with police, officials said. Violence has spread across Pakistan in recent months, seeping out of remote tribal regions that are sanctuaries for al-Qaeda and Taliban militants and into cities and towns.
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/ 23 January 2008
The annual Davos gathering of the world’s political and business elite opened on Wednesday with the fragile state of the world economy and stock-market turmoil casting a pall over the glitzy get-together. In recent years the annual meeting in the Swiss ski resort has been held against a backdrop of bumper corporate profits, strong economic growth and tame inflation.
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/ 21 January 2008
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf pledged on Monday to hold free elections as he began a four-country European trip aimed at winning international support. Musharraf’s popularity has slumped over recent months in Pakistan, which has been racked by militant attacks, and faces a parliamentary election on February 18.
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/ 18 January 2008
Pakistani forces killed up to 90 militants in two battles on Friday in the South Waziristan region on the Afghan border, the military said. The clashes came two days after hundreds of militants overran a paramilitary fort in another part of South Waziristan.
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/ 18 January 2008
A few days ago a Pakistani newspaper published a cartoon of a political weather map forecasting bombs all across Pakistan. It is all too real. There has been no let-up in attacks in a country still reeling from the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto in a gun and suicide-bomb attack last month.
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/ 15 January 2008
Pakistani political leaders face a looming threat of attack and must get serious about their security and avoid unnecessary exposure in the run-up to a February general election, the government said on Tuesday. Opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed in a gun and bomb attack as she left an election rally in the city of Rawalpindi on December 27.
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/ 12 January 2008
A suicide bomb attack that killed 19 people in Lahore, which had been a haven from violence, demonstrates an intensifying show-down with militants at a time when Pakistan is in a volatile political flux. The blast in the country’s political nerve centre on Thursday carried an ominous message ahead of February’s national election.
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/ 10 January 2008
At least 22 Pakistani riot police were killed in a suicide-bomb attack outside the high court in the commercial heart of Lahore on Thursday, officers said. The bomber set off a device packed with ball bearings when police stopped him outside the court, two weeks to the day after the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said on Tuesday his government was committed to finding the truth behind the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto and he vowed to punish her killers. Bhutto, twice Pakistan’s prime minister, was killed in an attack on December 27 as she left an election rally in Rawalpindi.
Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf conceded that a gunman may have shot Benazir Bhutto but said the opposition leader exposed herself to danger and bore responsibility for her death, CBS News said on Saturday. Musharraf was also quoted as telling the CBS 60 Minutes programme that his government did everything it could to provide security for Bhutto.
The whirlwind of violent destruction triggered by Benazir Bhutto’s death lashed Kashmore, a cotton-farming town at the junction of Pakistan’s three largest provinces, particularly hard. A frenzied mob tore through its narrow streets, plundering banks, torching the hospital and trashing its telephone exchange.
A British police team flew into Pakistan on Friday to help probe the killing of Benazir Bhutto after President Pervez Musharraf admitted he was unhappy with his country’s handling of the investigation. The detectives from an elite anti-terrorism team at Scotland Yard flew in amid raging controversy over the assassination of the opposition leader.
A team of police from Britain’s Scotland Yard is expected to arrive in Pakistan on Friday to help probe the assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto as the controversy over her death rages on. On Thursday, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf admitted he was ”not fully satisfied” with his own country’s handling of the investigation.