Bhutto Pleads To Clinton

Former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto appealed Thursday to President Clinton to protect her jailed husband, whom she said the government is trying to kill.

In a letter to Mr. Clinton, Bhutto also complained of widespread human rights abuses by Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, accusing him of targeting the press, judiciary and her party's supporters.

She appealed to President Clinton to spearhead an international campaign "against these gross violations of basic and fundamental human rights, and dispatch immediately your own investigative and medical teams."

These teams should investigate the condition of her husband, Asif Ali Zardari, Bhutto said.

Asif Ali Zardari (AP)

Zardari said he had been tortured.

On Wednesday, Bhutto's party workers in southern Karachi displayed bloodstained clothes they said belonged to Zardari. They said the blood was the result of torture.

"We have good reason to believe that Mr. Zardari's life continues to be in imminent danger," Bhutto said in her letter to Mr. Clinton. She asked that an investigation be launched by the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan to "determine the state of his health and safety."

Next week, Bhutto is to be in Washington to make personal appeals on behalf of her husband and to lobby for international condemnation of Sharif's government.

Zardari, who was investment minister in his wife's government, has been in jail since Bhutto was dismissed from power in 1996. He has been charged with two murders, including the 1996 shooting death of Bhutto's estranged brother, Murtaza.

Last month a special court convicted both Zardari and Bhutto of corruption, sentenced them to five years in jail and fined them $8.6 million. Bhutto, who was said to be in London, has refused to return to Pakistan without a guarantee she won't be arrested.

In her letter to President Clinton, Bhutto accused Sharif of state-sponsored terrorism and warned that Sharif "must not be allowed" to head the world's newest nuclear state. Pakistan and its neighbor India exploded underground nuclear devices one year ago, declaring themselves nuclear powers.

"In light of the deteriorating situation in Pakistan, and the already demonstrated penchant by the Nawaz Sharif regime to use illegal force, threats, torture and even assassination as tools of his state ... it gives me little pleasure to again warn you, for the world's own security, that a man as brutal as Nawaz Sharif must not be allowed to steward the world's newest nuclear arsenal."

Sharif's government has dismissed Bhutto's accusations.