Bhutto eyes Pakistan return, fears assassination

Musharraf's amnesty, if it goes ahead, could be lucrative for Bhutto and her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, who are believed to be the beneficiaries of about $1.5 billion in frozen Swiss bank accounts, The Sunday Times (UK) reports. Bhutto has denied holding any overseas bank accounts, including the disputed Swiss accounts.

Bhutto and Zardari were alleged to have amassed a fortune from kickbacks on government contracts during her two terms as prime minister. Their assets allegedly included a 10-bedroom, mock-Tudor Surrey mansion and, according to anticorruption investigators, £740m in Swiss bank accounts.

Hassan Waseem Afzal, a highflying civil servant who led the Bhutto investigation for 10 years, said last week that he believed the deal with Musharraf to drop the corruption charges would unlock the frozen accounts.

The accounts were registered in the names of Bhutto's mother, Begum Nusrat Bhutto, and Zardari, a former minister. But Afzal said the Pakistan government and a Swiss magistrate had obtained evidence that Bhutto herself was a beneficiary ….

Bhutto and Zardari, who spent seven years in prison in Pakistan on corruption charges, were convicted in absentia by a Swiss court in 2003. The Swiss magistrate found that during her second term as prime minister she enriched herself or her husband with kickbacks from a government contract with two Swiss companies.

Amid the political dealmaking in Islamabad, Pakistani troops are battling armed militants in the tribal belt on the Pakistani-Afghan border. Last week, the fighting intensified in North Waziristan, with hundreds dead. A report by Asia Times highlights the US government's role in brokering a political deal that keeps Pakistan fully engagedin the battle against Taliban forces that threaten stability in Afghanistan.

Pakistan's political transition is the most important link in US strategy in the southwest Asian region and to some extent in the Middle East. The US State Department's Richard Boucher has visited Pakistan and United Arab Emirates (where Bhutto has been living) six times in the past nine months in an attempt to reconcile Musharraf and Bhutto and thus ensure a friendly government in Islamabad, thus retaining an ally in the "war on terror" as well as curbing any adventurous designs by the Pakistani military and safeguarding Pakistan's nuclear assets.

While last week's political machinations were under way in Pakistan, the US was providing intelligence to Islamabad about a massive regrouping of the Taliban in the Pakistani tribal areas in preparation for a big campaign against NATO forces in southeast Afghanistan. The US feared that a disruption of the political dialogue would mean a hiatus in Pakistan's political transition, and delay military operations against the thousands of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces gathering in North Waziristan before launching attacks on the Afghan provinces of Khost, Paktia, Paktika, Gardez and Ghazni, and then Kabul with unending waves of suicide missions. If the Taliban were allowed to hatch their plans unmolested during a political vacuum in Islamabad, Washington believed the Taliban would seize the upper hand in Afghanistan.

By returning to Pakistan on Musharraf's terms, Bhutto is taking a gamble on her grass roots popularity, according to The Chicago Tribune. Her association with Musharraf could tarnish her reputation as a politician who stands up to the military.

Her popularity has also taken a hit since she started talking with Musharraf, whose presidential win in front of parliament Oct. 6 is being challenged in court. In July, the two met in Abu Dhabi, after months of rumors of negotiations. Only 35 percent of 4,000 Pakistanis surveyed in late August and early September support a power-sharing deal between Bhutto and Musharraf, according to a poll released Thursday by the International Republican Institute.

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