Former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto, currently living in exile in Dubai and London, has pledged to turn over the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program Dr A Q Khan to the International Atomic Energy Agency if she returns to power.
Bhutto also called on the United States to sponsor an international monitoring team to make sure that Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf doesn't rig the election scheduled in less than two weeks.
The erstwhile premier, in an effort to garner US support for her efforts to regain power, suggested that the Pakistani military was involved in the illegal nuclear weapons technology export network that was run by Khan. She said: "While we won't agree for Western access to him, the IAEA would be given the right to put questions that will satisfy them and will give the world greater confidence that the illegal network has been broken."
Bhutto, who still remains the chairperson of the Pakistan People's Party, said when she comes back to power, she would make sure the PPP would hold a parliamentary hearing to determine if Khan was acting alone and was solely responsible for what he had confessed to, or was part of a larger conspiracy.
Bhutto, who has said she will return to Pakistan on October 18, also said: "We would like the United States to fund a robust international monitoring team to Pakistan to fund also a parallel vote count or exit polls so that the elections will not be stolen."
She said that if there is an independent count of the vote or an exit poll that is taking place on a wide enough level, it would prevent the elections from being stolen.
Bhutto also said: "While the PPP would not vote for Musharraf from this parliament unless there is a constitutional amendment, it would not resign if he took the necessary steps to show that he was moving towards fair elections and a level-playing field."
Elaborating, she said, "If General Musharraf will retire from the post of army chief by October 5 -- given his pledge to retire before the year's end, and second, seek national reconciliation by passing an immunity law for those parliamentarians not proven guilty in the last decade, and third, repeal the ban on a twice-elected prime minister seeking office -- a law that he put into place contrary to the constitution -- the PPP will not resign from the assemblies."
She said her party would be holding a meeting with its ARD allies to decide this issue on October 3.
But Bhutto made clear if her negotiations with Musharraf were to break down and the latter was to go back on certain conditions, the PPP would join the PML-N in protests and expressed the hope that it would not come to that.
She said her battle with Musharraf had never been personal, but to ensure that there be fair and free elections in Pakistan, pursuant to the Constitution supervised by a robust team of international monitors and observers, as quickly as possible.
Bhutto asserted that her goal was quite literally to save democracy in Pakistan, to give democracy a chance to nurture and grow and strengthen.
Bhutto said she had decided to land in Karachi because "it is the city where the founder of Pakistan rests -- Quaid-I-Azam Mohammed Ali Jinnah," who she said, "campaigned to create Pakistan as a democracy where all citizens would be equal irrespective of their race, their religion or their gender."