Lawyers Take On Musharraf

Musharraf met in the morning with dozens of foreign diplomats, telling them he had no choice but to declare an emergency and suspend the constitution.

"I can assure you there will be harmony," he said, according to state-run television. "Confidence will come back into the government, into law enforcement agencies, and Pakistan will start moving again on the same track as we were moving."

Musharraf declined to give details of when elections would be held or when he would step down as army chief, as he had promised to do. One Western diplomat called the meeting "uncomfortable and tense" and said that Musharraf was "dismissive" of objections to his decision.

The U.S. ambassador, Anne W. Patterson, told Musharraf of Washington's concern about his government's "extraordinarily heavy-handed measures," including the arrest Sunday of 70 human rights workers. "It would be hard to imagine a group less threatening to the security of Pakistan and more in accord with the democratic values you have espoused," Patterson said, according to the diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

In the first tangible step it has taken against Musharraf since Saturday, the United States postponed annual defense talks with Pakistan that were due to begin Tuesday. The Dutch government went much further, becoming the first country to suspend aid to Pakistan as a result of the emergency declaration.

The Pakistani government kept independent domestic news stations, as well as the BBC and CNN, off the air for the third straight day, and Pakistani journalists said they had been given no timetable for when transmissions might resume.

The country's deposed chief justice, Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry, remained under house arrest along with six other Supreme Court judges who had tried to block Musharraf's declaration. All were fired.

Chaudhry issued a statement through a spokesman in which he said that his "home is locked from the outside and there is no way to go out."

The opposition group led by former prime minister Nawaz Sharif, one of the main targets of the government's raids, said it had decided to back the lawyers in a nationwide movement against Musharraf.

But the nation's largest opposition party, the Pakistan People's Party, led by former prime minister Benazir Bhutto, is in a trickier spot. Bhutto had spent months before the imposition of emergency rule negotiating a possible power-sharing arrangement with Musharraf that might have allowed her to become prime minister.

Musharraf's announcement, she said in an interview Monday night, violated their agreement. Bhutto said that her supporters would protest in the garrison city of Rawalpindi on Friday, although she played down predictions of the kind of massive crowds that greeted her return from exile last month. She said she still hopes that Musharraf will reverse course, adding that protests would help.

"Our goal is to get Musharraf to revive the constitution, to retire as chief of army staff by November 15 and to have the elections held on schedule," Bhutto said.

Other opposition parties have said they do not believe free and fair elections are possible under Musharraf, but Bhutto disagreed.

Asked if she would meet with Musharraf, Bhutto said, "He hasn't asked me to meet him."

Correspondent Emily Wax in Lahore and special correspondent Imtiaz Ali in Peshawar contributed to this report.