ISLAMABAD, Sept 16: Exiled former prime minister Benazir Bhutto on Sunday accused allies of President Gen Pervez Musharraf of pushing Pakistan towards a dangerous crisis by refusing to share power and restore democracy.

Ms Bhutto also told The Associated Press that her party may join other opposition groups in resigning from parliament and taking to the streets to try to force the president from office.

In a telephone interview, Ms Bhutto said that the group was advising Musharraf to contest a presidential election due by Oct 15 without stepping down as army chief.

“We all know that any election in uniform would be illegal. But they prefer to play with the Constitution and create a crisis rather than have a smooth transition to democracy,” Bhutto said. “Pakistan can ill afford confrontation and anarchy.”

Bhutto has been in talks with Musharraf for months on a pact that would include constitutional amendments to defuse legal challenges to his re-election bid and let her return to Pakistan and compete in parliamentary elections due by January.

But negotiations have snagged over the reluctance of Musharraf, who seized power in a 1999 coup, to give up his sweeping powers, and dismay among his die-hard supporters that they could be eclipsed by Bhutto. Leaders of the ruling PML (Q) party have repeatedly suggested that Musharraf could declare a state of emergency to forestall chaos.

Bhutto said she believed that some of Musharraf’s advisers genuinely wanted an agreement with her. But she said the government had failed to deliver a response promised in the last round of negotiations with her envoys in Dubai on Sept 4.

She declined to forecast whether the talks could still succeed, but said her party was girding for a failure which could deepen the political confrontation.

Earlier on Sunday, an alliance of rival opposition parties declared that their lawmakers would resign from the federal and provincial parliaments — which together elect the president — if Musharraf is a presidential candidate. Bhutto’s liberal party has shunned the alliance, which includes the conservatives of former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif and pro-Taliban religious parties. But she said it was “very much an option” for her party to follow suit in quitting their seats.

While the courts would decide the legality of Musharraf’s move, mass resignations would deny him legitimacy and would likely trigger a broader movement, including street protests, she predicted. As well as endangering the elections, that prospect “worries me because Pakistan is a nuclear-armed country that can ill afford internal instability at a time when its own armed forces are being attacked by militants,” she said.

Bhutto, 54, plans to return to Pakistan on Oct 18 after eight years in self-exile in Dubai and London. Officials have said she will not be deported like Sharif, who was sent back to exile in Saudi Arabia last week. However, they warn that she has to face corruption cases dating back to her two terms as prime minister between 1988 and 1996.

“I could be thrown into prison. I could face a situation such as the chief justice of Pakistan did when he went back to the city of Karachi” in May, when clashes with opposition activists widely blamed on a pro-government party left about 40 people dead.

“On the other hand, maybe I go back and the people are so many and they are not able to stop them and I have a good reception,” she said.—AP