US urges Pakistan move ahead with free election

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US urges Pakistan move ahead with free election

Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit

[What a hoot! ]

Reuters via Yahoo - Dec 30, 2007
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20071230/india_nm/india311782


US urges Pakistan move ahead with free election

The Bush administration on Sunday urged Pakistan to move ahead with
free elections but declined to push Islamabad to hold the scheduled
Jan. 8 ballot after opposition leader Benazir Bhutto was killed last
week.

"We believe it is important for Pakistan to confront extremists and
continue on the path to democracy by holding free and fair elections,"
White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said in a statement.

"The timing of those elections will be up to the Pakistanis," Stanzel
said in Texas where U.S. President George W. Bush was spending a
weeklong holiday at his ranch.

Bhutto's death has thrown the election in doubt and a senior official
in Pakistan, a key ally in Bush's war on terrorism, said it could be
delayed for up to eight weeks.

The United States and other Western allies have urged Pakistan's
President Pervez Musharraf to hold elections, hoping that will bring
stability to the nuclear-armed country that is emerging from eight
years of military rule while facing mounting violence from Islamist
militants allied to al Qaeda.

The U.S. State Department went somewhat further than the White House,
saying if the election was delayed Pakistan should also announce a new
date for the polls.

"If there is a delay in the elections, we want to make sure a new date
is named. We don't want to see an indefinite delay," said a State
Department spokesman, declining to be further identified.

But the State Department spokesman said that the naming of Bhutto's
19-year-old son and her husband as the leaders of her party, the
Pakistan People's Party, would help Pakistan move ahead with the polls.

Bhutto died while campaigning on Thursday in a suicide attack that has
stoked violence in the country.

Copyright (c) 2007 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.

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