Bhutto Floats Unity Government
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ISLAMABAD — Benazir Bhutto said she is seeking an alliance with other opposition leaders today to form a caretaker government that could replace President Musharraf ahead of January elections.
“I am talking to the other opposition parties to find out whether they are in a position to come together,” Ms. Bhutto said in a telephone interview from her home in Lahore where she is under house arrest. “We need to see whether we can come up with an interim government of national consensus to whom power can be handed.”
General Musharraf, meanwhile, finalized an interim administration to oversee the January vote. A senior government official said Mohammedmian Soomro, chairman of the upper house of Parliament, would be sworn in as caretaker prime minister tomorrow. Mr. Soomro is regarded as a Musharraf loyalist.
The elections are supposed to complete the restoration of democratic rule in Pakistan, eight years after General Musharraf seized power in a bloodless coup.
