FORMER Pakistani prime minister Benazir Bhutto has vowed to send her supporters onto the streets to force President Pervez Musharraf to reinstate democratic rule.
Members of Ms Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party (PPP) - the country's biggest opposition party - have so far failed to join lawyer-driven protests against the general's imposition of de facto martial law on Saturday.
Private intelligence agency Stratfor said the former premier, who returned from eight years of self-imposed exile to hammer out a power-sharing deal with General Musharraf, is in a precarious situation. It said she found herself 'walking a tightrope' between taking a stand against his power grab and upholding her end of the deal.
But it added: 'If she reneges on the deal and joins the protests full-force, the tide could turn strongly against the President.'
Ms Bhutto is calling for Gen Musharraf to retire as army chief and hold a national election which had been scheduled for mid-January.
'If we do nothing, then Musharraf will think that the nation supports what has happened, and the nation does not support that,' The Times of London quoted her as saying after meeting PPP leaders at her home in Karachi.
'It's certainly very difficult to know what Gen Musharraf is going to do next, because he said one thing, and he says all the right things to me, but what he said did not happen,' Ms Bhutto told Britain's Sky Television yesterday.
The Times of London also reported that another former prime minister had called for protests to be stepped up. It quoted Mr Nawaz Sharif, who is in exile in Saudi Arabia, as saying it was time for 'the whole country to rise against these dictatorial actions'.
