No Extradition For Pearl Suspects

President Pervez Musharraf said Saturday he turned down a U.S. extradition request for the killers of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl so that their punishment at home could serve as an example to those defying his crackdown on violence and terror.

The military leader also suggested he wanted to see changes in the constitution giving the military a say in overseeing elected governments.

Musharraf, who ousted an elected government and imposed military rule in 1999, spoke for two hours with selected reporters and depicted himself as a reluctant leader whose place in history is to guide Pakistan to true democracy.

He said he would resist any U.S pressure to extradite British-born Islamic militant Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, the chief defendant in the trial of those accused of killing Pearl.

The Wall Street Journal reporter disappeared in Karachi in January while researching links between Pakistan's militants and Richard C. Reid, the man arrested in December on a Paris-Miami flight with explosives in his shoes.

A videotape received Feb. 21 by U.S. diplomats in Karachi confirmed Pearl, 38, was dead. His body has not been found.

Saeed and three other defendants have pleaded innocent to charges of murder, kidnapping and terrorism. They face the death penalty if convicted.

"He's done a terrible act in Pakistan," the president said of Saeed. "He must be punished in Pakistan. I want the people of Pakistan to know that we will move against terrorism."

He spoke of creating a National Security Council giving the military chief of staff a shared role with the president and prime minister in exercising "checks and balances on all the power brokers" in a democracy.

Such a body would "encourage the government, if it was doing well," he said, but also would have "the power to check misdoing."

It was unclear how closely the proposal would be modeled on Turkey's National Security Council, which comprises the country's top military and civilian leaders and is the country's most powerful body.

The Turkish military has stepped into politics three times since 1960 and the council gained enormous power following the latest military coup in 1980. Generals on the council pressured an Islamic government to step down in 1997.

The Pakistan army also has played a significant role in the country's 55-year history: Musharraf is the third general to stage a putsch.

There are other parallels. Musharraf spent his childhood years in Turkey and has endorsed the role of moderate Islam in Pakistani politics.

Nawaz Sharif, the prime minister he ousted, tolerated radicalism and supported the Taliban. Although Musharraf banned five militant groups in January, violence has continued, including Pearl's killing and several deadly bomb attacks — acts that threaten to undermine stability once parliament resumes work after October's scheduled elections.

Musharraf suggested he would stay in power as long as he believed he had the people's support — and until he believes the country can be run by freely elected governments without the instability that accompanied past experiments with democracy.

"Let us see how the country's doing, and let us see how I'm doing," he said at his sprawling, hacienda-style offices. "My exit strategy? The moment I see the people don't want me, I quit."

Critics say that time came long ago.

The 1999 coup was widely condemned. Pakistan was suspended from the Commonwealth and the United States imposed economic sanctions that were only lifted earlier this year after Musharraf turned Pakistan away from the Taliban and toward the U.S.-backed war on terror.

Most recently, Tuesday's referendum endorsing him for another five years as president was described as illegal by political opponents, radical Muslim clerics and human rights monitors.

Organizers were accused of tolerating, if not actively encouraging, massive cheating to inflate turnout and the percentage of those supporting the bid.

Pakistan's opposition parties said Saturday they will publish findings to support their claims of massive fraud, including that police at deserted polling stations stamped ballot papers in Musharraf's favor.

Such criticisms have been rejected by the stocky, soft-spoken general.

Westerners, he said, cannot understand that his brand of leadership is better than the corrupt elected government he abolished in an impoverished and violence-torn country far removed from the stability underpinning democracy in the West.

"We want true democracy to function in Pakistan, take root in Pakistan, so that a government functions for its whole tenure and fully hands over to the next elected government," he said.

For the near future, Musharraf left no doubt he would keep a close eye on his country's political direction.

"The prime minister will run the country," after October elections, Musharraf said. "But I will not allow him to run it badly."