KARACHI, 9 July — Asif Zardari, the jailed husband of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, has shown his willingness to have a deal with the government but made it clear that “it will be of a political nature, aimed at resolving the crisis the country has been facing, and not for any personal benefit.” “It will have nothing to do with my person,” he told reporters in Hyderabad, the second main Sindh city, where he was taken unannounced on Saturday to face a murder trial.
“It will not be a deal that Nawaz Sharif (the former prime minister), has done with the government. I don’t like to secure personal benefits from a government which has no locus standi. My deal will be for the country and its people, it will be political deal. Yes, I am always willing and ready for that. If my country, and its people benefit, I will be looking for that,” he said.
Zardari, facing about a dozen different charges since the fall of his wife’s government in November 1996, drew the attention of the reporters to fears for his life. He flayed the administration for transporting him from the country’s northern parts of Rawalpindi to the southern city of Hyderabad in the darkness of the night. He was never alerted about that, nor was he served any notice that he was going to be moved, from his cell, in which he had been lodged for over a year to face corruption charges in the accountability in Attock.
“This is all a game by the (intelligence) agencies. They were so firmly entrenched that no government has been able to shake them so far. Governments keep changing but the intelligence agencies continue to play their games, irrespective of the aims of the government of the day.”
