Pakistan Moves Against Opposition

Local sources said that all of the arrested men were extremists loyal to Taliban commander Baitullah Mehsud. "Out of these alleged militants, seven were arrested on charges of planning suicide attacks," said a local official in Wana, the main town in South Waziristan.

Opposition groups did not organize any large protests Sunday but vowed to do so later in the week. Lawyers who attempted to rally in the southern city of Karachi early Monday were beaten back by police wielding batons.

"Lawyers and civil society will challenge the government," Jahangir wrote, "and the scene is likely to get uglier."

Qazi Hussain Ahmed, head of a conservative religious party, said: "It's time to take a stand. It's a now-or-never chance, and people should come out on the streets and throw out this military dictator." Hundreds of the party's activists had been arrested as of Monday morning, a party spokesman said.

Efforts to mount a nationwide campaign against Musharraf are likely to be hurt by the crackdown, particularly the continuing blackout of independent television stations, which had become a major catalyst for anti-Musharraf protests earlier in the year. "If you don't have television, you don't have crowds," news anchor Kashif Abbasi said.

Abbasi said the government was pressuring the stations to sign a new code of conduct that would impose severe restrictions on what the stations could report. He said journalists would resist the move. "Do we have a choice? We can't sit there and report, but not talk about the president, the prime minister, the government or its policies," he said.

The only televised news Sunday came from the state-run channel, which ran clips from Musharraf's speech to the nation.

The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad issued a statement Sunday saying Washington was "gravely concerned" about the crackdown. "Such extreme and unreasonable measures are clearly not in Pakistan's best interest, and contradict the progress Pakistan has made toward becoming a fully democratic society," the statement said.

A close adviser to Musharraf said Sunday that the president's inner circle believed that before he issued the order, the United States and Britain had grudgingly accepted the idea of emergency rule, despite earlier objections. He said he did not expect any action against Musharraf by the West. "When we convinced them that it would only be for a very short time, they said, 'Okay,' " the adviser said.

A Western diplomat hotly disputed that contention. "The U.S., along with Britain and other countries in the E.U. and the Commonwealth, made every effort to try to dissuade Musharraf's government from doing this," the diplomat said on the condition of anonymity, adding that "Rice couldn't have been stronger in several phone calls" to Musharraf.

It was unclear, however, whether U.S. disapproval would translate into punitive measures.

The police presence in Islamabad, the capital, remained heavy Sunday, and a tense calm prevailed in much of the city.