Pakistan’s government is finalising a “charge-sheet” against Pervez Musharraf as battle lines are drawn in the bitter struggle over the President’s future.

Several allies of Mr Musharraf began to distance themselves from him, saying he should stand down for the good of the country, but the former general again insisted he would fight the impeachment charges being prepared by his opponents. Meanwhile, the process to oust Mr Musharraf gathered additional pace as a crucial regional assembly overwhelmingly passed a vote of no confidence against him, saying he was “unfit” to rule.

Aftab Sherpao, a formerinterior minister in Mr Musharraf’s government and leader of a small regional party, said he was considering joining those seeking to force out the President. “[Mr Musharraf] is going to fight these charges on a moral ground to try to disprove them… But when it comes to the numbers, I think he’s lost it,” he said.

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(ACNS) Western culture often exacerbates the difficulties Christians face in societies where they are in a minority, the Moderator of the Church of Pakistan said yesterday.

While headlines (at least in the religious press) of persecution of Christians in Pakistan are commonplace, Bishop Malik said at the daily Lambeth press conference yesterday that his daily experience of Muslim people is overwhelmingly positive, and that dialogue “is for us a daily business, a dialogue of life”.

“Always it is a small minority who disturbs the conversation,” he said, alluding to extremist violence. “But Western culture exacerbates it.” He said that the publication of anti-Islamic cartoons last year which prompted strenuous and sometimes violent protest from Muslims also attracted the ire of Christians in Pakistan who felt that they should not have been published.

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If it was not yet clear to Washington that a new political order prevailed here, the three-day visit this week by America’s chief diplomat dealing with Pakistan should put any doubt to rest.

The visit by Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte turned out to be series of indignities and chilly, almost hostile, receptions as he bore the brunt of the full range of complaints that Pakistanis now feel freer to air with the end of military rule by Washington’s favored ally, President Pervez Musharraf.

Faced with a new democratic lineup that is demanding talks, not force, in the fight against terrorism, Mr. Negroponte publicly swallowed a bitter pill at his final news conference on Thursday, acknowledging that there would now be some real differences in strategy between the United States and Pakistan.

He was upbraided at an American Embassy residence during a reception in his honor by lawyers furious that the Bush administration had refused to support the restoration of the dismissed judiciary by Mr. Musharraf last year.

Mr. Negroponte once told Congress that Mr. Musharraf was an “indispensable” ally, but the diplomat was finally forced to set some distance after months of standing stolidly by his friend. Mr. Musharraf’s future, he said, would be settled by Pakistan’s new democratic government.

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It is interesting to note that Bhutto always had the support of most Christians, despite our tribulations under her father, Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto. Christians hoped that she would truly be a moderate force for democracy, but even before her assassination, she betrayed those hopes.

Christians who supported PPP and other secular political parties comforted themselves that it was the first joint election after the abolishment of the separate electorate system, in which religious minority candidates competed ”” almost always unsuccessfully ”” against Muslim candidates. Political parties, we thought, should be given time for adjustment. We have been proven wrong.

This regrettable and discriminatory attitude is not new to me; I am not shocked, but disappointed. Christians have been considered second-class citizens since 1949, when the democratic dictatorship imposed Objective Resolution ”” nicknamed Pakistan’s Magna Carta ”” and declared that Pakistan would be modeled on Islamic ideology. Ever since then, the situation has gotten progressively worse, with almost all consequent rulers contributing to this situation.

Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto nationalized schools and colleges in 1972, taking the top schools out of the church’s control. When General Zia-ul-Haq’s regime decided to return the schools and colleges to their owners two administrations later, Christians were refused entry to Christian schools and colleges, while the privileged were admitted.

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By: George Conger.

A LAHORE court has acquitted the Bishop of Raiwind and seven co-defendants of murder.

Last Friday Sessions Judge Abdul Karim Langah dismissed all charges against the Rt Rev Samuel Azariah (pictured) and his co-defendants, finding they were innocent of the 2006 murder of Khalida Gill.

On April 24, 2006, three men entered the home of Nathanial Gill, an attorney litigating a land dispute case against the diocese of Raiwind. The intruders shot Mrs Gill, who died three days later without having regained consciousness.

Two days after the shooting, Nathaniel Gill filed a complaint with the police alleging that one Salman Shaukat had murdered his wife on the orders of Bishop Azariah and other leaders of the diocese. Gill’s complaint stated he had been the target of the assassins, who sought to kill him because of the land dispute. Not finding him home, they turned their guns upon his wife, he charged.

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President Bush’s senior national security advisers are debating whether to expand the authority of the Central Intelligence Agency and the military to conduct far more aggressive covert operations in the tribal areas of Pakistan.

The debate is a response to intelligence reports that Al Qaeda and the Taliban are intensifying efforts there to destabilize the Pakistani government, several senior administration officials said.

Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and a number of President Bush’s top national security advisers met Friday at the White House to discuss the proposal, which is part of a broad reassessment of American strategy after the assassination 10 days ago of the Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto. There was also talk of how to handle the period from now to the Feb. 18 elections, and the aftermath of those elections.

Several of the participants in the meeting argued that the threat to the government of President Pervez Musharraf was now so grave that both Mr. Musharraf and Pakistan’s new military leadership were likely to give the United States more latitude, officials said. But no decisions were made, said the officials, who declined to speak for attribution because of the highly delicate nature of the discussions.

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A former prime minister of Pakistan came and laid a wreath Saturday on the grave of his former political rival.

But just before he did it, Nawaz Sharif blamed the military government of Pervez Musharraf for pulling Pakistan into the “grave crisis” that resulted in the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. His words were terse, his eyes dry.

“His policies are responsible,” Mr. Sharif said in an interview on a specially chartered propeller plane that took him to Ms. Bhutto’s ancestral village. “Whether he is responsible or not, an independent commission will have to investigate. No commission can be independent if Musharraf is in charge of this government.”

Mr. Sharif’s antipathy to Mr. Musharraf runs deep. The former general ousted Mr. Sharif in a 1999 coup, which Mr. Sharif tried to prevent by blocking the landing of Mr. Musharraf’s plane in Karachi. Mr. Sharif was tried, convicted and sentenced to life in prison for that, though the sentence was later modified to exile in Saudi Arabia, from which he returned last month.

On Saturday, Mr. Sharif flew to an airstrip in Mohenjo-Daro, where South Asian civilization was born some 5,000 years ago, and from there to the ancestral village of Ms. Bhutto, Naudero, where senior leaders of both their parties met briefly to give their sympathies and discuss the way forward. Mr. Sharif has already said his party would boycott the polls, scheduled for Jan. 8.

He said on his way to Naudero that he hoped Ms. Bhutto’s Pakistan People’s Party would join the boycott. “With Musharraf, Pakistan doesn’t have a future,” he said in the interview.

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More important to note is who the anger is not being directed at. I hope that the legacy of Benazir Bhutto’s untimely and tragic death is a legacy of a society that seizes this moment to reassert its demand for democracy and to recognize that extremist violence is our problem. This is not a mercenary war. This is Pakistan’s own battle. Right now the evidence suggests that society continues to tear at its own self. I fear that it will not change anytime soon. That things are likely to get worse before they become any better. But, I refuse to give up hope. At least, not yet.

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So yes, I can still campaign. Not as freely as in the past, but I don’t intend to be intimidated by those who threaten to kill me. And I see that in every event where there is a threat to one’s core interests, national interests, people send their young men and women to give their lives. America sends their young men and women to Afghanistan where they risk death. No one says don’t send our boys because somebody may kill you. So where there is a cause that is larger than oneself, one has to take the risks.

–Benazir Bhutto in an interview on the Lehrer Newshour, November 2007, a section of which was reaired last evening

Angry supporters rioted in her home city, the southern port of Karachi, The Associated Press reported, shooting at police officers, setting tires and cars on fire and burning a gas station.

In a brief televised address, President Pervez Musharraf called for support from the Pakistani people and declared three days of mourning. “This is a great tragedy which I cannot describe in words,” he said, according to a report on state-run media.

He blamed terrorists for the attack, saying “Pakistan and the nation faces the greatest threat from these terrorists.”

Condemnation of the assassination flowed in from around the world. President Bush called it a “cowardly attack by murderous extremists who are trying to undermine Pakistan’s democracy.” The White House said Mr. Bush called Mr. Musharraf early Thursday afternoon.

In a statement on the United Nations Web site, Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, called the killing “an assault on stability.”

Ms. Bhutto’s death is the latest upset in Pakistan’s treacherous political situation, and leaves her party leaderless in the short term and likely to be unable to effectively compete in hotly contested parliamentary elections that are two weeks away, according to Hasan Askari Rizvi, a leading Pakistani political and military analyst.

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