Musharraf To Lift Emergency, With A Caveat

President Pervez Musharraf will lift Pakistan's state of emergency Saturday, only after changing the constitution to ensure he cannot be hauled before a court, a senior official said, as lawyers held more protests against the retired general.

Musharraf purged the judiciary, jailed thousands of opponents and silenced television news channels after he suspended the constitution and declared emergency rule Nov. 3.

The U.S.-backed leader said he acted to prevent political chaos and give authorities a freer hand against Islamic militants. Critics accuse him of a last-ditch power grab before the old Supreme Court could declare his continued rule illegal.

Two suicide attacks killed three members of Pakistan's security forces in the southwestern city of Quetta on Thursday, state television reported.

Deputy police chief Rehmatullah Niazi confirmed two explosions near a checkpoint in the city, the capital of Baluchistan province, but had no details of casualties. Pakistan television said three members of the security forces were killed and seven were injured.

On Thursday, Attorney General Malik Mohammed Qayyum told The Associated Press that the president, who has acknowledged he breached the constitution when he imposed emergency measures on Nov. 3, will amend the charter to protect his decisions from legal challenges.

Qayyum said government legal experts were finalizing the changes that would be announced before Musharraf lifts the emergency Saturday, but provided no details.

"The president will lift the emergency to restore the constitution and the fundamental rights," he said.

Parliamentary elections on Jan. 8 will decide who will form the next government. Opposition leaders Nawaz Sharif and Benazir Bhutto, two former prime ministers who recently returned from years of living in exile, have hit the campaign trail this week after abandoning threats to boycott the balloting.

While Bhutto and Sharif are united in their opposition to Musharraf, they are longtime political foes who already have been squabbling about the best way to create an independent judiciary after Musharraf replaced the purged judges with ones who have rejected all challenges to the new four-year term he won in October from a Parliament stacked with his loyalists.

About 1,000 lawyers rallied in the eastern city of Lahore, chanting slogans against Musharraf and urging a vote boycott unless the government reinstates the deposed chief justice Iftikhar Mohammed Chaudhry and other independent-minded judges. About 800 lawyers, Islamists and rights activists held a similar rally in Multan.

Bhutto told reporters in Karachi that no other opposition party had approached her to form an electoral alliance, indicating that major maneuvering remains on who will have the numbers to put together a government.

Musharraf, who seized power in the 1999 coup, stepped down as army chief last month, meeting a key demand of the opposition and his foreign backers. He was sworn in as a civilian to begin a new five-year presidential term.