ISLAMABAD, 9 November 2002 — Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto’s jailed husband Asif Ali Zardari flew from the capital to Karachi under police escort late yesterday after the government allowed him to visit his ailing mother, his lawyer said.
“Mr. Zardari has been permitted to see his aged mother who is seriously ill in a Karachi hospital,” Farooq Naik told AFP.
Zardari’s transfer to Karachi comes amid persistent reports that the government is covertly negotiating with Benazir’s Pakistan People’s Party a political deal under which Zardari would be released on medical grounds, after six years in jail.
A senior government official said Zardari, who is currently under trial in Rawalpindi near Islamabad on corruption charges, would be allowed to stay in Karachi for two days only.
Sardar Khalid, a close aide of Zardari said the government granted permission purely on humanitarian grounds. He said it had no connection with any deal. “Frankly, the government gesture has taken us by surprise but everyone knows his mother is sick and he is desperate to go and see her,” Khalid told AFP. Zardari, a former senator and former minister in his wife’s Cabinet, has been in custody since 1996 on seven corruption charges and eight criminal cases. The PPP has publicly denied reports of a deal. But officials both in the party and the government have privately said a deal was in the works.
Zardari told AFP earlier yesterday that he had been approached by government officials, but would never agree to a deal.
“I will have nowhere to go if I strike any clandestine deal with the powers-that-be and I don’t want to put myself in a situation where whatever I have sacrificed in the past six years goes to waste,” he said after a court hearing.
“I don’t say I don’t want to be released. Every caged bird wants to be free and flying, but will think twice if foxes are outside.” Zardari confirmed that PPP parliamentary leader Makhdoom Amin Fahim was negotiating with the government on a power-sharing arrangement.
“There is definitely a dialogue between Fahim and powers-that-be but no deal. The word deal is coined by establishment to undermine politicians,” he said. “No one has asked me to leave the country. I have told them that I am a small fry and the real person to talk to is party’s chairperson (Benazir).” (AFP)
