Turmoil strikes Pakistan after Bhutto sacking

Turmoil strikes Pakistan after Bhutto sacking

ISLAMABAD (Reuter): President Farooq Leghari sacked the
government of Pakistan's most industrialized province yesterday
as tremors from the dismissal of former prime minister Benazir
Bhutto reverberated through the political system.

Acting on Leghari's order, the governor of the southern
province of Sindh, Kamal Azfar, dissolved the local parliament
and dismissed the government, his spokesman said in Karachi.

Bhutto's ancestral home is in Sindh, where the financial
capital Karachi is located. Karachi, with a population of more
than 12 million, has been torn by sectarian violence.

The Sindh governor named Mumtaz Bhutto, an estranged uncle of
Bhutto, as the troubled province's caretaker chief minister.

The interim chief minister will replace Abdullah Shah of
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP), whose dismissal came two
days after his party's leader was removed by Leghari on disputed
charges of corruption and misrule.

Mumtaz, an opposition deputy in the dissolved assembly, is the
first cousin of Bhutto's father, executed former prime minister
Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.

Azfar's spokesman said the reasons for the dismissal of the
Sindh assembly were similar to those cited by Leghari on Tuesday
in a scathing order sacking Bhutto.

Leghari had justified his dismissal of Bhutto's government on
the grounds that it was paralyzed by corruption, nepotism and
misrule and had allowed security forces to kill "thousands of
people" in Karachi and elsewhere.

The president, once an ally of Benazir Bhutto, was expected to
dissolve the governments of the three other provinces.

The ousting of the local assemblies would clear the way for
elections to both the federal and provincial legislatures in
early 1997.

Leghari has asked caretaker prime minister Meraj Khalid to
step up a fight against corruption.

Share prices on the Karachi stock exchange soared on Wednesday
after Bhutto was sacked as investors anticipated a serious anti-
corruption drive.

But prices fell back sharply yesterday after Moody's Investors
Service downgraded Pakistan's credit ratings.

Leghari has set general elections for Feb. 3, but a pledge by
Bhutto to fight her dismissal in court has added uncertainty to
the timetable.

Bhutto met her detained husband Asif Ali Zardari in the early
hours of yesterday for the first time since her dismissal two
days earlier, her spokesman said.

The spokesman, Shah Mahmood Qureshi, said Bhutto had been
taken to see Zardari at an official resthouse near Islamabad at
about 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday, but had been made to wait for more
than four hours before her husband was produced.

"Zardari was in good spirits and so was Bhutto," said Qureshi,
former state minister for parliamentary affairs. He said he had
not been at the meeting and had no other details.

The couple's reunion took place hours after Bhutto had
threatened to bring kidnapping charges against Leghari.

Zardari was picked up by soldiers in Lahore on Tuesday and
later transferred to Rawalpindi. The caretaker government said on
Wednesday that he was in "protective custody," but did not
clarify the grounds on which he was being held.

Zardari is the target of corruption allegations levelled
against Bhutto's government and has also been accused of
conspiring to murder Bhutto's brother Murtaza, killed by police
in Karachi on Sept. 20. Zardari has denied the charges.