Watch our dictator comply with the order.
Bush wants emergency lifted ahead of Pakistan vote](http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5jyGYaaUTwpC_OXi5Vl3uCYIq7-Vg)
WASHINGTON (AFP) — US President George W. Bush wants emergency rule lifted in Pakistan ahead of parliamentary elections, as officials Tuesday said a senior State Department official was preparing to visit Islamabad.
“The president thinks that we need to lift the emergency rule in order to have free and fair elections,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino told reporters as Bush returned to Washington from his Texas ranch on Monday.
President Pervez Musharraf must also shed his army uniform “since the president (Bush) thinks you can’t be both president and the chief of the army,” Perino said.
Bush is sending a special envoy to personally tell Musharraf that Washington wants emergency rule lifted ahead of January elections, The New York Times reported Tuesday.
The newspaper, citing unnamed administration officials, did not identify the envoy or indicate when the emissary would travel.
However officials at the US embassy in Islamabad told AFP that US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte will visit Pakistan shortly, without confirming if he is the special envoy.
The Negroponte visit “was planned for some time as part of the long-term strategic dialogue,” US embassy spokeswoman Liz Colton told AFP.
Colton did not say when Negroponte would arrive, but Pakistan’s Dawn newspaper said it would be later in the week.
Pakistani government sources said there were no known plans for any other US officials to visit the country but could not rule out a visit by another Washington official.
Negroponte is expected to discuss the current political crisis, sparked by Musharraf’s declaration of a state of emergency on November 3, as well as the fight against Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, Dawn said.
Publicly the Bush administration continues to support Musharraf, seen as the best deterrent against Al-Qaeda in Pakistan. “Nobody is ready to cut him off at the knees yet,” an unnamed US official told the Times.
But many administration members worry that Musharaff’s mistakes are eroding his support so badly that he could be forced to surrender power, the official told the Times.
Musharraf on Sunday said parliamentary elections would be held by January 9, but indicated that his state of emergency would likely persist until then “to ensure absolutely fair and transparent elections.”
The United States and Britain have quietly supported power-sharing talks between Musharraf and Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto, who is back under house arrest, in an attempt to unite two pro-Western leaders in the battle against Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants.
But Bhutto, whose party is the largest opposition group in Pakistan, on Tuesday called on Musharraf to quit as president and vowed never to serve under him.
Bhutto also called on the international community to end their support for Musharraf, “to stop backing the man whose dictatorship threatens to engulf this nuclear-armed state in chaos.”
Bush praised Musharraf as a pivotal ally to the US-led “war on terror” on Saturday, and said he had no reason to doubt the general’s pledges to return to democratic rule.
Bush predicted that the United States “will continue to have good collaboration with the leadership in Pakistan” because Washington needs help against Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network.
** In a television interview on Sunday, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice welcomed Musharraf’s elections pledge but called for a rapid end to his state of emergency.
Rice told ABC News that the United States was still reviewing its 10-billion-dollar aid to Pakistan in light of his emergency rule.
“But if the suggestion is that we somehow now abandon a course that could lead back to a path of democracy for Pakistan, I think that would be a mistake on our part,” she said.**