Held under house arrest behind barbed wire, Pakistani opposition leader Benazir Bhutto yesterday called for military leader Pervez Musharraf to quit as President, isolating him in the run-up to a general election.
Britain stepped up international pressure on General Musharraf, who imposed emergency rule on November 3 in a move seen aimed at helping him cling to power, backing a 10-day Commonwealth ultimatum for him to end the emergency and quit as army chief.
Mrs Bhutto has long called for Mr Musharraf to step down as army chief and become a civilian President but it was the first time she had called for him to quit as President altogether - a move that could sound the death knell for US hopes that the pair would end up sharing power. She also said she would not serve as Prime Minister under him, and that her party might boycott the general election Mr Musharraf has promised to hold by January 9.
"It is time for him to go. He must quit as President," Mrs Bhutto, who spent months trying to negotiate a power-sharing deal with President Musharraf, told Reuters by telephone as police bundled clusters of her protesting supporters into vans.
Mrs Bhutto was put under house arrest for a week in the city of Lahore, and a motorcade to Islamabad that she planned to lead to protest against emergency rule was stifled as 20,000 police sealed the area. Her party said 1,500 activists had been held.
General Musharraf set off a storm of criticism when he imposed the emergency, suspended the Constitution, sacked judges, locked up lawyers, rounded up thousands of activists and curbed the media.
The crisis has raised fears about stability in the nuclear-armed US ally, and concern about its ability to focus on battling growing Islamist militancy.
Unidentified gunmen opened fire on two police stations in Karachi while Mrs Bhutto's supporters were protesting against her detention but no one was hurt. In Peshawar, police used teargas and batons to disperse protesters.
Mrs Bhutto was dogged by accusations of corruption during her two terms as Prime Minister, but her party is Pakistan's biggest and has the capacity to mobilise huge crowds.
President Musharraf has come under growing pressure from Western allies to set Pakistan back on a path to democracy. He has declined to say when the Constitution will be restored, and said the emergency will ensure a fair vote.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and US President George W. Bush both urged Mr Musharraf on Monday to lift the emergency.
The Commonwealth said it would suspend Pakistan unless he ended emergency rule and quit the army by November 22, a call endorsed by British Foreign Secretary David Miliband.
US Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte, who last week warned against cutting aid to an "indispensable" security ally, is due in Pakistan later this week.
President Musharraf has justified the emergency by saying a meddling judiciary was hampering the battle against militants. Diplomats say he wanted to stop the Supreme Court from declaring invalid his election by loyalist legislators on October 6.
General Musharraf has said he will step down as army chief and become a civilian President as soon as the court, where new judges seen as friendly to the government have been appointed, rules on challenges to his election.